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THE 


STORY    OF    ASSYRIA 

FROM   THE   RISE    OF    THE    EMPIRE    TO    THE 

FALL   OF    NINEVEH 

(continued  from  "the  story  of  chaldea.") 

BY 

ZENAIDE    A.    RAGOZIN 

MEMBER   OF    THE    "^SOCl^TE    ETHNOLOGIQUE  "    OF    PARIS;    CORRESPONDING    MEMBKK 
OF   THE    "•  ATHENEE    ORIENTAL"    OF    PARIS;    MEMBER    OF   THE    "AMERICAN 

ORIENTAL    SOCIETY." 


"  He  (Carlyle)  says  it  is  part  of  his  creed  that  history    is  poetry,   could  we 
tell  it  right." — Emerson. 

"Da  mihi,  Domine,  scire  quod  sciendum    est.' — ''Imitation  of  Christ." 
("  Grant  that  the   knomledge  I  get   may  be  the  knowledge  worth   ha^nng.^' — 

Alattheiv  Af>iold''s  translatio)i.\ 


NEW  YORK 
G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 

LONDON:     T.    FISHER    UNWIN 
1893 


COPYRIGHT    BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
1887 


Ubc  IknicfterbocFjer  Iprcss,  t\c\v  ^ovk 

Electrotyped  and  Printed  by 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 


CLASSIFIED   CONTENTS. 


I. 

PAGE. 

The  Rise  of  Asshur 1-39 

§  I.  Natural  boundary  of  Assyria  towards  Babylonia. — §  2. 
Beginnings  of  Asshur.  First  colonies.  Assyrian  Patesis. — 
§  3.  Assyria  Proper. — §  4.  Asshur — a  Semitic  nation.  Re- 
ligious affinities  with  the  Hebrews.  Asshur,  the  supreme 
god. — §§  5-6.  Parallel  between  passages  from  Assyrian  in- 
scriptions, and  from  the  Bible. — §  7.  Difference  between  the 
relation  towards  the  deity  of  Assyrian  and  Hebrew  kings. — 
§  8.  The  emblems  of  Asshur  on  the  monuments. — §  9.  As- 
syrian Pantheon  identical  with  the  Babylonian. — §  10.  Early 
relations  between  Assyria  and  Babylon. — §  11.  First  ap- 
pearance of  Egyptian  conquerors  in  Western  Asia — §§  12, 
13.  Brief  survey  of  earlier  Egyptian  history.  Hyksos  inva- 
sion.— §  14.  Egyptian  conquests  in  Asia.  Acts  of  retalia- 
tion.— §  15.  Battle  of  Megiddo,  First  collision  between 
Assyria  and  Egypt. — §  16.  The  Khetas  or  Hittites.  Their 
power  and  wealth. — §§  17-18.  Their  capitals  and  empire. — 
§  19.  The  long  duration  of  the  Hittite  power. — §  20.  Hit- 
tite  writing  and  art. — §  21.  Early  aggrandizement  of  As- 
syria.    First  conquest  of  Babylon. 

II. 

The  First  Empire. — Tiglath  Pileser  I.         .         40-66 

§  I.  Lakes  Van  and  Urumieh  and  the  Dead  Sea. — §  2.  The 
"  Lands  of  Nairi." — §  3.  The  rock  sculpture  of  Tiglath-Pile- 
ser  L  by  the  sources  of  the    Tigris. — §  4.  The  cylinder  of 

iii 


iv  CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Tiglath-Pileser  I.  used  for  a  test  of  Assyriology. — §§  5,  6,  7. 
Tiglath-Pileser's  campaigns  to  Nairi,  as  narrated  on  the  cyl- 
inder.— §  8.  His  expeditions  to  the  west.  First  mention  of 
the  Aramaeans.  Beginning  of  this  race's  long  political  ca- 
reer.— §  9.  Tiglath-Pileser's  summing  up  of  his  military 
achievements. — §  10.  His  wise  home-rule. — §  11.  His  hunt- 
ing exploits  and  love  of  sport. — §  12.  His  flying  visit  to  the 
sea-coast. — §  13.  His  last  years  troubled  with  disasters. 
Unfortunate  expedition  to  Babylonia. — §  14.  Blank  in  the 
history  of  Assyria  after  Tiglath-Pileser,  and  for  the  space  of 
200  years. — §  15.  Tiglath-Pileser  the  real  founder  of  As- 
syria's greatness. 

HI. 

The  Sons  of   Canaan  ;  Their  Migrations. — 

The  Phcenicians     ....         67-102 

§  I.  Wealth  and  greatness  of  the  Phoenicians  about  iioo 
B.C. — §.  2.  The  Canaanitic  races.  The  "Pount"  or 
*'  Puna." — §  3.  Conjectures  about  their  early  migrations. — 
§  4.  Pre-Canaanitic  inhabitants  of  Syria  and  Palestine. — 
§  5.  Conjectures  as  to  "  who  were  these  people  .'' " — §  6.  Th 
Phoenicians  and  their  narrow  sea-coast  home. — §  7.  Rise  of 
their  trade  and  wealth. — §  8.  The  purple  dye.  What  a  small 
shell-fish  did  for  a  nation. — §  9.  It  promotes  maritime  dis- 
coveries and  colonization. — §  10.  Voyages  for  tin. — §  11. 
Tarshish. — §  12.  The  "  Cassiterides."  Land  route  across 
France  and  sea  route  to  the  English  '  Tin  Islands." — §  13. 
The  Pillars  of  Melkarth.  Gades.  Tales  about  Tarshish. 
§  14.  Trade  with  amber.  Land  route  across  Germany. — 
§  15.  Land  routes  across  Western  Asia. — §  16.  Great  wealth 
and  splendor  of  Tyre. — §  17.  Money-making  the  key  to  the 
Phoenician  character  and  historical  mission. — §  18.  They  are 
wanting  in  literary  gifts,  and  lack  inventiveness  and  origi- 
nality.— §  19.  Their  great  importance  as  the  agents  for 
spreading  material  civilization  and  establishing  intercourse 
between  distant  countries. —  They  may  be  called  the  Ped- 
dlers of  the  Ancient  World.  Low  moral  standard  of  such  a 
mission. 


CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS. 


IV. 

PAGE. 

The  Sons  of  Canaan.  Their  Religion. — 
Sacrifice  as  an  Institution. — Hu- 
man Sacrifices      ....         103-144 

§  I.  Materialism  and  sensuality  distinctive  features  of  the 
Hamitic  races. — §  2.  Materialistic  character  of  their  relig- 
ions, yet  with  a  certain  tendency  towards  monotheism. — §  3. 
Dualism  of  Canaanitic  religions.  Baal,  Moloch  and  Ash- 
toreth. — §  4.  Melkarth,  the  Baal  of  Tyre. — §  5.  Obscurity  of 
Phoenician  myths. — §  6.  Ashtoreth  and  her  different  forms. — 
§  7.  High  places,  sacred  groves  and  the  Ashera. — §§  8,  9. 
Baal  and  his  different  forms. — §§  10,  11.  Self-torture  and  hu- 
man sacrifice  features  of  ancient  worship. — §§  12,13.  The  na- 
ture of  ancient  sacrifice. — §  14.  Consecration  a  form  of  sac- 
rifice. Sacrifice,  to  be  perfect,  demands  destruction  of  the 
object  offered. — §  15.  Victims  or  offerings,  to  be  acceptable, 
must  be  perfect  of  their  kind. — §  16.  Human  sacrifices  a  log- 
ical sequence  and  culmination  of  the  idea  of  sacrifice ;  sac- 
rifices of  children  the  most  valuable,  hence  the  most  perfect 
of  all. — §  17.  The  sacrifice  of  the  first  born  a  primeval  insti- 
tution; consecration  and  ransom  substituted  at  a  more  ad- 
vanced and  milder  stage  of  culture. — §  18.  Human  sacrifices 
supposed  to  be  of  divine  institution.  Phoenician  legend  on 
the  subject. — §  19.  The  legend  illustrated  by  the  sacrifice  of- 
fered by  Mesha,  king  of  Moab. — §  20.  Hindu  legends. — §  21. 
Greek  legend. — §§  22-24.  Intense  emotional  nature  of  the 
Orientals. — Orgiastic  religions. — §  25.  Human  sacrifices  the 
special  due  of  Baal  Moloch,  the  Destroyer,  in  times  of  pub- 
lic calamity. — §§  26-28.  Child-sacrifices  at  Carthage  and 
among  the  Jews. — §  29.  Vows.  The  Jewish  "  Kherem." — 
§  30.  Sanchoniatho  and  the  garbled  account  of  Phoenician 
Cosmogony. — §  31.  The  myth  and  worship  of  Adonis-Tham- 
muz. — §  32.  The  Kabirim. — §  T^y  The  Phoenicians  carry 
their  religion  and  worship  to  their  colonies. 


vi  CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS. 


V. 

PAGE. 

The  Neighbors  of  Asshur. — Revival  of  the 

Empire    ......         145-174 

§  I.  Revival  of  Assyria. — §  2.  The  "Limmu"  and  the 
Eponym  Canon. — §  3.  State  of  affairs  in  Syria. — §  4.  Along 
the  sea-coast. — §  5.  Growth  of  Israel.  The  Hebrew  mon- 
archy.— §  6.  Idolatry  long  tolerated.  The  centre  of  national 
worship  established  at  Jerusalem. — §  7.  Solomon's  despot- 
ism.— §  8.  The  division  of  Israel  a  consequence  of  Solo- 
mon's harsh  rule.  §  9.  The  revival  of  Assyria  favored  by 
the  dissensions  in  Syria. — §  10.  Renewal  of  Assyrian  con- 
quests in  the  North. — §11.  King  Asshurnazirpal,  His  cam- 
paign in  Nairi. — §  12.  His  atrocious  cruelty.  He  collects 
tribute  from  the  Phoenician  cities. — §  13.  His  constructions. 
Rebuilds  Kalah  and  makes  it  his  residence. — §  14.  The 
sculptures  of  his  time. — §  15.  His  hunts. — §  16.  The  rise  of 
the  Kaldu  (Chaldeans  proper). — §  17.  The  princes  of  Chal- 
dea.     Their  policy  and  ambition. 


VI. 

Shalmaneser  II. — Asshur  and  Israel       .         175-212 

§  I.  Character  of  Shalmaneser  II. 's  reign. — §  2.  Summary  of 
his  military  career. — §  3.  First  campaigns. — §  4.  First  Syr- 
ian expedition.  The  Syrian  League. — §  5.  Alliance  be- 
tween Ahab  of  Israel  and  Benhadad  of  Damascus. — §  6.  Bat- 
tle of  Karkar. — §  7.  Second  Syrian  campaign. — §  8.  Third 
Syrian  campaign.  Submission  of  Jehu  of  Israel. — §  9.  The 
Black  Obelisk. — ^§  10.  Jehu's  submission  not  mentioned  in 
the  Bible. — §  11.  The  gates  of  Balawat. — §  12.  Shalmane- 
ser's  retirement.  Rebellion  of  his  eldest  son.  Accession  of 
his  other  son,  Shamshi-Raman  III. — §  13.  Raman-Nirari 
III. — §§  14-16.  The  Story  of  Semiramis. — §  17.  Utter  his- 
torical worthlessness  of  the  story. — §  18.  Urartu  and  the 
Alarodians. — §  19.   Rise  of  the  kingdom  of  Van.     Its  cult- 


CLASSIFIED  CON  TENTS. 


Vll 


ure  and  writing  borrowed  from  Assyria. — §  20.  Second  De- 
cline of  Assyria.  Accession  of  Tiglath-Pileser  II. — §  21. 
His  double  name:  Phul  or  Pul  and  Tiglath-Pileser. — §  22. 
The  mission  of  the  prophet  Jonah  not  mentioned  on  the 
monuments.  Suggested  explanation  of  the  whale  story. — 
§  23.  Foundation  of  Carthage. 

Appendix  to  Chapter  VI.     ....     212-217 
The  Stele  of  Mesha  the  Moabite. 

vn. 
The  Second  Empire. — Siege  of  Samaria         .     218-246 

§  I.  Assyria's  greatness  under  Tiglath-Pileser  II. — §  2. 
Political  Character  of  the  Second  Empire. — §  3.  Annexa- 
tions. Wholesale  deportations. — §  4.  Generals  in  command, 
— §5.  Plan  of  operations  in  the  West. — §  6.  First  Cam- 
paigns :  in  Kaldu,  the  Zagros  and  Nairi. — §  7.  Syrian  Cam- 
paign of  738  B.C.  Menahem  of  Samaria  pays  tribute. — 
§8.  Syria  and  Israel  against  Judah. — §  9.  Approaching  dis- 
solution of  Israel.  Ahaz  of  Judah's  embassy  to  Tiglath- 
Pileser,  entreating  aid. — §  10.  Syrian  Campaign  of  734  B.C. 
— §  II.  Taking  of  Damascus. — §  12.  Chaldean  Campaign. — 
§  13.  Merodach  Baladan  of  fJit-Yakin  pays  homage. — §  14. 
End  of  Tiglath-Pileser's  reign. — §  15.  Shalmaneser  IV. — 
§  16.  Renewed  hopes  and  revolts  in  the  West. — §  17.  Re- 
vival of  Egypt  under  Shabaka  the  Ethiopian. — §  18.  His 
readiness  to  support  the  Asiatic  cities  and  kingdoms.  His 
powerlessness  and  Isaiah's  warning. — §  19.  Revolt  of  Tyre. 
Siege  of  Tyre  by  the  Assyrian's.— §  20.  Revolt  of  Israel. 
Siege  of  Samaria. 

VIII. 
The  Pride  of  Asshur. — Sargon      .         .         .     247-294 

§  I.  Fall  of  Samaria  and  transportation  of  the  people  of 
Israel. — §.  2.  Sargon's  parentage  unknown. — §  3.  His  vig- 
orous policy  at  home  and  abroad. — §  4.  Discontent  in  the 
West  and  intrigues  with  I^gypt.— §  5.  Disastrous  rising  in 
Syria.— §  6.  Battle  of  Raphia.— §  7.  Submission  of  Tyre.— 
§  8.  Great  rising  in  Nairi.  Merodach  Baladan,  king  of  Baby- 
lon.— §  9.  General  conspiracies  and  repressions. — §  10. 
Capture  of  Karkhemish,  the  final  blow  to  the  Hittite  nation- 


y[[[  CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS. 

ality. — §  II.  Campaign  against  Urartu.— §  12.  Expedition 
into  Media.— §§  13,  14.  Popular  rising  quelled  in  Ashdod. — 
§15.  Merodach  Baladan  prepares  for  war. — §§16-17.  His 
"embassy"  to  Hezekiah,  king  of  Judah.— §  18.  Sargon  in- 
vades Chaldea. — §  19.  Merodach  Baladan  flies  to  Elam. — 
§20.  Sargon  invited  to  enter  Babylon.— §  21.  His  consummate 
generalship  and  the  capture  of  Dur-Yakin. — §  22.  He  concil- 
iates the  cities  of  Babylonia.— §  23.  He  receives  the  hom- 
age of  seven  kings  of  Cyprus.— §  24.  His  last  military  and 
political  acts. — §§  25-27.  Construction  of  Dur-Sharrukin. — 
§  28.  Marvellous  wealth  of  Sculptures  in  Sargon's  palace. — 
§  29.  Summary  way  of  peopling  the  new  city. — §  30.  Sargon's 
wise  and  beneficent  home  rule. — 31.  His  invocations  for 
prosperity  and  long  life. — 32.  His  assassination. 

IX. 

The  Sargonides. — Sennacherib.      (Sin-Akhi- 

iRiB.) 295-330 

§  I.  Sennacherib's  name  long  familiar  from  the  Bible. — 
§§  2,  3.  General  character  of  his  reign. — §  4.  His  first  suc- 
cesses in  Chaldea. — §  5.  Merodach  Baladan's  flight. — §  6. 
Campaign  against  the  Kasshi  and  Ellip. — §  7.  Preparations 
for  a  campaign  against  the  West  and  Egypt. — §  8.  Hezekiah 
of  Judah  revolts. — §§  9,  10.  Siege  of  Lakhish  and  submission 
of  Hezekiah. — §§  11,  12.  Messengers  sent  by  Sennacherib  to 
Hezekiah. — §  13.  The  King  of  Judah  comforted  by  the 
prophet  Isaiah. — §  14.  Battle  of  Altaku. — §  15.  Sennach- 
erib compelled  to  retreat  by  the  plague  breaking  out  in 
his  army. — §  16.  Second  campaign  to  Chaldea;  disappear- 
ance of  Merodach  Baladan. — §  17.  Campaign  into  Nairi. — 
^  §  18.  Maritime  expedition  across  the  Gulf  into  Elam. — 
§19.  Unsuccessful  expedition  into  the  Zagros. — §20.  Third 
campaign  against  Babylonia.  Advance  of  the  forces  of  Elam 
and  Babylon. — §  21.  Battle  of  Khaluli. — §  22.  The  Bavian 
rock  inscription. — §§  23,  24.  Sack  and  destruction  of  Baby- 
lon.— §  25.  Last  scanty  notice  of  .Sennacherib's  military 
career. — §  26.  His  assassination  by  two  of  his  sons. — §  27. 
Reconstruction  of  Nineveh. — §  28.  Sennacherib's  palace  at 
Nineveh, 


CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS.  ix 


X.  -^ 

The  Sargonides  :  Esarhaddon  (Asshur-akhi- 

IDDIN.) 331-346 

§  I.  Scarcity  of  monuments  of  this  king's  reign. — §  2.  His 
"addresses"  to  Ishtar,  and  Ishtar's  "messages." — §3. 
Esarhaddon's  brief  war  against  his  brothers. — §  4.  Troubles 
in  Bit-Yakin. — §  5.  Reconstruction  of  Babylon. — §  6.  Expedi- 
tion against  the  "  distant  Medes"  in  the  east  and  against 
the  Gimirrai  (Cimmerians),  in  the  North. — §  7.  Arabian 
campaign. — §  8.  Rising  in  Sidon  repressed. — §  9.  Esarhad- 
don receives  the  homage  of  twenty-two  kings. — §  10.  Con- 
struction and  inauguration  of  his  palace  at  Nineveh. — §  11. 
Troubles  in  Syria. — §  12.  Rising  in  Tyre  repressed. — §  13. 
Egyptian  campaign. — §  14.  Esarhaddon's  abdication  and 
death. — §  15.  Appointment  of  Shamash-Shumukin  to  the 
viceroyalty  of  Babylon. 

XI. 

The   Gathering     of   the   Storm. — The   last 

Comer  among  the  Great  Races   .     .    347-370 

§§  1-3.  Appearance  on  the  scene  of  the  Aryan  race,  the  last 
among  the  four  great  races.— §  4.  Migrations  of  the  Aryan 
or  Indo-European  race.  —  §  5.  Its  great  qualities.— 
§  6.Ariana.— §  7.  Eran  and  Turan.— §  8.  The  Medes. 
§  9.  Their  early  social  conditions.— §  10.  Their  advance 
towards  the  West.— §  11.  They  supplant  nations  of  other, 
especially  Turanian,  stock.— §  12.  Aryan  migrations  into  and 
across  Russia.-^§  13. — The  Cimmerians. — §  14.  Their  mi- 
gration into  Thrace,  driven  before  the  Scythians. — §  15.  Asia 
Minor  early  peopled  by  Hittites.— §  16.  Hittite  sculptures  in 
Lydia.— §  17,  in  Cilicia.— §  18,  in  Cappadocia.— §  19.  Lydia 
and  its  early  traditions.— §  20.  The  Phrygo-Thracian  family 
of  nations.— §  21.  The  Cimmerians  cross  the  Bosphorus  and 
invade  Asia  Minor. 


CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS. 


XII. 

The    Decline    of    Asshur. — Asshurbanipal 

(Asshur-bani-habal)       .         .         .        371-416 

§  I.  Brilliant  beginnings  of  Asshurbanipal's  reign. — §§  2-4. 
Egyptian  campaign  and  sack  of  Thebes. — §  5.  Rising  and 
submission  of  Tyre  and  Arvad.— §§  6-8.  Incident  with 
Gyges,  King  of  Lydia. — §  9.  Uncertain  chronology  of  this 
reign. — §  10.  Assyria  threatened  from  several  points. — §  11. 
Danger  from  the  Scythians  south  of  the  Caucasus. — §  12. 
Defeat  of  Gog  the  Scythian  king.— §  13.  First  war  with 
Elam  :  Urtaki,  King  of  Elam,  opens  hostilities  and  is  de- 
feated.— §  14.  His  brother  Teumman  succeeds.  Second 
war. — §  15.  The  Ishtar  vision.— §  16.  Battle  on  the  Ulai 
and  death  of  Teumman. — §  17.  Tortures  and  executions. — 
§  18.  Revolt  of  Shamash-Shumukin. — §  19.  Encouraging 
dream  of  a  seer. — §  20.  Revolutions  in  Elam. — §  21.  Siege 
of  Babylon  and  end  of  Shamash-Shumukin. — §  22.  Nabu- 
bel-zikri  of  Bit-Yakin  goes  over  to  Elam. — §  23.  More  revo- 
lutions in  Elam. — §  24.  Third  great  war  with  Elam.  Sack 
of  Shushan. — §  25.  Tragic  end  of  Nabu-bel-zikri. — §  26.  Pa- 
cification of  Bit-Yakin. — §  27.  Last  troubles  in  Elam. — §  28. 
Arabian  campaign. — §  29.  Asshurbanipal's  triumph.  His 
chariot  drawn  by  four  captive  kings. — §  30.  Uncertainty 
about  the  last  years  of  this  reign.  Asshurbanipal's  palace 
?nd  library. — §  31.  The  sculptures. — §  32.  Asshurbanipal — 
the  Sardanapalus  of  the  Greeks. 


xni. 

The  Fall  of  Asshur 417-432 

§  I.  Entire  lack  of  Assyrian  monuments  for  the  last  vears  of 
the  Empire. — §  2  Uncertainty  about  the  last  kings  of  As- 
syria.— §  3.  Assyria  rapidly  loses  all  the  conquered  ])rov- 
inces. — §  4.  Story  of  Daokes  and  the  Medes. — §  5.  Proba- 
ble explanation  of  the  story. — §  6.  Median  invasion  of  As- 
.syria  under  Phraortes. — §§  7-8.   Kyaxares  and  the  invasion 


CLASSIFIED  CONTENTS.  ^i 

of  the  Scythians. — §  9.  Descent  of  the  Scythians  into  Syria. 
— §  10.  Description  of  the  Scythians  by  the  prophet  Jere- 
miah— §  II.  Another,  by  the  prophet  Ezekiel. — §  12.  The 
Scythians  probably  overrun  Assyria. — §  13.  Kyaxares  rids 
Media  of  the  Scythians. — §  14.  Alliance  between  Kyaxares 
and  Nabopolassar,  the  new  King  of  Uabylon. — §  15.  Siege 
and  fall  of  Nineveh. — §  16.  Nahum's  prophecy. — §  17.  The 
prophet  Ezekiel's  lament  over  Asshur. — §  18.  Immediate 
causes  that  hastened  the  fall  of  Asshur. 


PRINCIPAL  WORKS  READ  OR  CON- 
SULTED IN  THE  PREPARATION 
OF   THE    PRESENT    VOLUME. 


Babelon,  Ernest.     Les  Assyriens  et  les  Chald^ens.     Quatri- 

eme  volume  de  1'    "  Histoire  Ancienne  de  1' Orient,"  de  Fran9ois 

Lenormant,  gme  edit.     Paris,  A.  Levy.      1885.     (Continued  from 

Lenormant  by  Mr.  Babelon.) 
Baudissin,  W.  G.     Jahve  et  Moloch.     Sive  de  ratione  inter  Deum 

Israelitarum  et  Molochum  intercedente.     Dissertatio  Inauguralis- 

Lipsiae  :  1874. 
Budge,  E.  A.  Wallis.     History   of   Esarhaddon.     London :    1880. 

I  vol. 
Cory.     Ancient  Fragments.     London :  1876.     i  vol. 
Delattre,  a.     Le  Peuple  et  l'  Empire  des  Medes,  jusqu'  a  la 

fin  du  regne  de  Cyaxare.     Bruxelles  :  1883.     i  vol. 
Les  Chaldeens,  jusqu'  a  la  formation  de  1'  Empire  de  Nabu- 

chodonozor.  (Extrait  de  la  "  Revue  des  Questions  Historiques.") 

Paris,  1877. 
EsQUissE  DE  G60GRAPHIE  AssYRiENNE  (Extrait  de  la  Revue 


des  Questions  Scientifiques).     Paris  :  1883.     55  pages. 
—  Les    Inscriptions   historiques  de    Ninive   et   de    Babylone. 


Paris:  1879.     (90  pages.) 

Delitzsch,  Dr.  Friedrich.  "  Wo  lag  das  Paradies  ?  "  Fine 
Biblisch-Assyriologische  Studie.     Leipzig:  1881.     i  vol. 

Duncker,  Max.  Geschichte  des  Alterthums.  5th  edition.  Leip- 
zig :  1878.     Vols.  I  and  2. 

HoMMEL,  Dr.  Fritz.  Geschichte  Babyloniens  und  Assyriens. 
(ist  and  2d  instalments,  320  pages.)  (Allgemeine  Geschichte  in 
einzelnen  Darstellungen,  edited  by  Wm.  Oncken.  Lieferungen 
95  and  117.)     Berlin,  1885  and  1886. 

Horning,     R.       Das     sechsseitige      Prisma     des     Sanherib,     in 


XVI 


PRINCIPAL   WORKS  CONSULTED. 


in  Mr.  Geo.  Rawlinson's  translation  of  Herodotus,  in  the  Cal- 
wer  Bibellexikon,  and  in  various  periodicals,  such  as  the  "  Pro- 
ceedings "  and  "  Transactions  "  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archae- 
ology, and  many  more. 


nnra^pjHBBn 

HMKiRS^ 

■ipn 

W^£^^^^^m 

!H!l(^^<^^pv 

^3 

^^JoS 

1^^^ 

B!^ 

^ 

H 

BSBBnuOHiSUuB^ 

LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


I\\GE 


ASSHURBANIPAL  HUNTING  LIONS 
EMBLEM  OF  THE  (JOD  ASSHUR    . 
WINGED  DISK    .... 
CYLINDER  SEAL  OF    SENNACHERIB 
ASSYRIAN  CYLINDER  SEAL 
HITTITE  INSCRIPTION 
DEAD  SEA  .... 

PROCESSION  (probably  OF  GODs) 
CARRIED  INTO  CAPTIVITY 
MARCH  OF  ASSYRIAN   ARMY 
PLUNDERING   AND  DEMOLISHIX(i   A  CITY 
SCALING  A  FORTRESS 
A  PASS  IN  LEBANON 
SOURCE  OF  THE  RIVER  ADONIS 
SMALL  PHCENICIAN  IDOL  IN   TERRA-COTTA 
ASHTORETH       .... 
PHCENICIAN  SARCOPHAGUS 
PHCENICIAN  CYLINDER 
COIN  FROM  CYPRUS 
COIN  FROM  SIDON.     . 
ASSYRIAN   PORTABLE    ALTAR       . 
GROUP  OF  CEDARS  IN  LEBANON 
ASSHURNAZIRPAL  AND  OFFICER 
COUNTING  AND  PILING  UP  HEADS  OF  CAPTIVK 
PRISONERS  IMPALED  BEFORE  CITY   WALLS 
LION   HUNT   (nIMRUd)  .... 

xvii 


Frontispiece 

II 

12 

14 

•       15 

.      Z^ 

.       41 

.       48 

49 

51 

•       53 

•       55 

.       77 

.       79 

.       98 

99 

lOI 

107 

• 

1 1 1 

III 

113 

T55 

160 

162 

163 

167 

XVlll 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIOXS. 


;  AGE 


LION  IN   ROYAL  PALACE      ..... 
ASSHURNAZIRPAL  OFFERING  SACRIFICE       . 
BLACK  OBELISK  OF  SHALMANESER  II. 
FIRST  FACE  OF  BLACK    OBELISK 
SECOND  FACE  OF  BLACK  OBELISK 
THIRD  FACE  OF  BLACK  OBELISK 
FOURTH  FACE  OF  BLACK  OBELISK 
TRIBUTE  BEARERS  BRINGING  MONKEYS       . 
GATE  OF  BALAWAT  ...... 

STELE  OF  SHAMSHI RAMAN  III.  .  . 

SEMIRAMIS  CHANGED  INTO  A  DOVE    . 
SEMIRAMIS  CHANGED  INTO  A  DOVE  (baCK  VIEw) 
THE  "  MESHA  STELE  "..... 
FLOCKS  AND  CAPTIVE  WOMEN  CARRIED  AWAY 
CAPTIVES  AND  PLUNDER  ..... 
ASSYRIAN  SOLDIERS  DESTROYING   A   PLANTATION 
STORMING   A  FORTRESS  (fACe) 
CITY  AND  PALACES  .  . 

PORTRAIT  OF  SARGON         ..... 
SARGON's  STANDARD  ..... 

SARGON  PUTS  OUT  PRISONERS'  EYES 
THE  MOUND  OF  KHORSABAD        ,  . 

SARGON'S  palace  at  KHORSABAD     . 
WALL  AND  GATE  OF  DUR-SHARRUKIN 
GATEWAY  OF  DUR-SHARRUKIN  (rESTOREd) 
SCULPTURES  ON  WALLS  OF  DUR-SHARRUKIN       . 
FACE  VIEW  OF  WINGED  BULL     . 
BATTLEMENTS  OF  TERRACE  WALL      . 
DECORATION  IN  ENAMELLED  TILES    . 
THRESHOLD  SLAB  IN  SARGON'S  PALACE 
LION  WEIGHT  .... 

TRANSPORT  OF  TLMBER  FOR  SARGON's  PALACE 
SENNACHERIB  ON  HIS  THRONE  IN  GALA  APPAREL 


169 

•    171 

.    186 

.  t88 

.  189 

•  .192 

•  193 

•  195 

•  197 

•  199 

202 

•  203 

.  214 

220 

221 

•  234 

•  ^Z^ 

.     244 

.  248 

.  252 

•  257 

.  279 

.  281 

.  282 

.  284 

.  286 

.  288 

.  289 

290 

291 

292 

•  293 

296 

LIST  OF  ILLUSTRA  T/ONS. 


XIX 


E  BANQUET 


3ENNACHERIB  RECEIVING  SUBMISSION  OF  CONQUERED 

PRINCE . 

SENNACHERIB   RECEIVES  SPOILS    OF    CITY    OF    LAKISH 

(face)       

WILD  SOW  WITH  YOUNG    . 
CAPTIVES  BUILDING   PLATFORM  MOUND 
FINISHED  WINGED  BULL    . 
HALF-SCULPTURED  WINGED  BULL 
ATTENDANTS  CARRYING  DESSERT  TO  TH 

HALL 

ROCK  STELE  OF  ESARHADDON 
HITTITE   ROCK  SCULPTURE    (kAKBEl) 
HITTITE  ROCK  SCULPTURE  (iBRIz)     , 
ASSHURBANIPAL  in  HIS  CHARIOT 
ASSHURBANIPAL  CROSSING  A  RIVER 
SCENE  FROM  THE  BATTLE  ON   THE  ULAI 
ASSHURBANIPAL  FEASTING 
ASSHURBANIPAL  FEASTING 
DYING  LION        ..... 
DYING    LIONESS  .... 

TABLET  FRON   ASSHURBANIPAL's  LIBRARY 
TAME  LION  AND  LIONESS 
TERRA-COTTA  DOG  .... 
THRESHOLD  OF  ASSHURBANIPAL's  PALACE 
LEASHED  HOUNDS  GOING  TO  THE  CHASE  . 


PAGE 
316 

325 
327 

329 
332 
361 

363 
372 
376 

389 

402 

403 

405 
407 

411 

412 

413 
414 

415 


THE   STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


I. 


THE    RISE    OF   ASSHUR. 


I.  There  is,  on  carefully  drawn  maps  of  Mesopo- 
tamia, a  pale  undulating  line  (considerably  to  the 
north  of  the  city  of  Accad  or  Agade),  which  cuts 
across  the  valley  of  the  two  rivers,  from  Is  or  Hit  on 
the  Euphrates, — the  place  famous  for  its  inexhausti- 
ble bitumen  pits, — to  Samarah  on  the  Tigris.  This 
line  marks  the  beginning  of  the  alluvium,  i.  e.,oi  the 
rich,  moist  alluvial  land  formed  by  the  rivers,"^  and 
at  the  same  time  the  natural  boundary  of  Northern 
Babylonia.  Beyond  it  the  land,  though  still  a  plain, 
is  not  only  higher,  rising  till  it  meets  the  trans- 
versal limestone  ridge  of  the  Sinjar  Hills,  but  of  an 
entirely  different  character  and  formation.  It  is 
distressingly  dry  and  bare,  scarcely  differing  in  this 
respect  from  the  contiguous  Syrian  Desert,  and 
nothing  but  the  most  laborious  irrigation  could  ever 
have  made  it  productive,  except  in  the  immediate  vi- 
cinity of  the  rivers.     What  the  country  has  become 

*  See  *'  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  yj' 


^  THE  S  TOR  Y  OF  ASS YRIA . 

through  centuries  of  neglect  and  misrule,  we  have 
seen.*  It  must  have  been  much  in  the  same  condi- 
tion before  a  highly  developed  civilization  reclaimed 
it  from  its  natural  barrenness  and  covered  it  with 
towns  and  farms.  It  is  probable  that  for  many  cent- 
uries a  vast  tract  of  land  south  of  the  alluvium  line, 
as  well  as  all  that  lay  north  of  it,  was  virtually  un- 
occupied ;  the  resort  of  nameless  and  unclassed  no- 
madic tribes,  for  Agade  is  the  most  northern  of  im- 
portant Accadian  cities  we  hear  of. 

2.  Yet  some  pioneers  must  have  pushed  northward 
at  a  pretty  early  time,  followed  at  intervals  by  a 
steadier  stream  of  emigrants,  possibly  driven  from 
their  populous  homes  in  Accad  by  the  discomfort 
and  oppression  consequent  on  the  great  Elamite  in- 
vasion and  conquest.  At  least  there  are,  near  the 
present  hamlet  of  Kileh-Sherghat,  on  the  right  bank 
of  the  Tigris,  the  ruins  of  a  city,  whose  most  ancient 
name  is  Accadian — AUSHAR — and  appears  to  mean, 
"  well-watered  plain,"  but  was  afterwards  changed 
into  AsSHUR,  and  which  was  governed  by  king- 
priests — patesis — after  the  manner  of  the  ancient 
Chaldean  cities. f  There  are  temple-ruins  there,  of 
which  the  bricks  bear  the  names  of  ISHMI-DAGAN 
and  his  son,  Shamash-RamAn,  who  are  mentioned 
by  a  later  king  in  away  to  show  that  they  lived  very 
close  on  1800  B.C.  The  colony  which  settled  here 
and  quickly  grew,  spreading  further  north,  appro- 
priating and  peopling  the  small  but  fertile  region  be- 
tween  the  Tigris,  its  several   tributary  streams,  and 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  6,  7,  and  Ch.  II.  of  Introduction, 
t  See  Ibid.  pp.  203  and  235. 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


3 


the  first  hills  of  the  Zagros  highlands,  was  Semitic  ; 
their  first  city's  name  was  extended  to  all  the  land 
they  occupied,  and  they  also  called  themselves  by  it. 
They  were  the  '*  people  of  Asshur  "  ;  their  land  was 
"  the  land  of  Asshur  "  ;  and  not  many  centuries 
elapsed  before  all  their  neighbors,  far  and  wide,  had 
good  reason  to  know  and  dread  the  name.  This 
sheltered  nook,  narrowly  circumscribed,  but  excep- 
tionally well  situated  as  regards  both  defence  and 
natural  advantages,  may  well  be  called  the  cradle  of 
the  great  Assyrian  Empire,  where  the  young  nation 
built  its  first  cities,  the  stronghold  in  which,  during 
many  years,  it  gathered  strength  and  independence, 
gradually  working  out  its  peculiarly  vigorous  and 
aggressive  character,  and  finding  its  military  training 
in  petty  but  constant  conflicts  with  the  surrounding 
roving  tribes  of  the  hill  and  the  plain. 

3.  Accordingly,  it  is  this  small  district  of  a  few 
square  miles, — with  its  three  great  cities,  Kalah, 
Nineveh,  and  Arbela,  and  a  fourth,  Dur-Shar- 
RUKIN,  added  much  later, — which  has  been  known 
to  the  ancients  as  Aturia  or  Assyria  proper,  and  to 
which  the  passage  in  the  tenth  chapter  of  Genesis 
(11-12)  alludes.  At  the  period  of  its  greatest  ex- 
pansion, however,  the  name  of  ''  Assyria  " — "  land  of 
Asshur  " — covered  a  far  greater  territory,  more  than 
filling  the  space  between  the  two  rivers,  from  the 
mountains  of  Armenia  to  the  alluvial  line.  This 
gives  a  length  of  350  miles  by  a  breadth,  between 
the  Euphrates  and  the  Zagros,  varying  from  above 
300  to  170  miles.  "The  area  was  probably  not  less 
than  75,000  square   miles,  which  is  beyond  that  of 


A  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

the  German  provinces  of  Prussia  or  Austria,  more 
than  double  that  of  Portugal,  and  not  much  below 
that  of  Great  Britain.  Assyria  would  thus,  from  her 
mere  size,  be  calculated  to  play  an  important  part  in 
history  ;  and  the  more  so,  as,  during  the  period  of 
her  greatness,  scarcely  any  nation  with  which  she 
came  in  contact  possessed  nearly  so  extensive  a  ter- 
ritory.   ^ 

4.  That  the  nation  of  Asshur,  which  the  biblical 
table  of  nations  (Gen.  x.  22)  places  second  among 
Shem's  own  children,  was  of  purely  Semitic  race, 
has  never  been  doubted.  The  striking  likeness  of 
the  Assyrian  to  the  Hebrevv^  type  of  face  would 
almost  alone  have  sufficed  to  establish  the  relation- 
ship, even  were  not  the  two  languages  so  very  nearly 
akin.  But  the  kinship  goes  deeper  than  that,  and 
asserts  itself  in  certain  spiritual  tendencies,  which 
find  their  expression  in  the  national  religion,  or, 
more  correctly,  in  the  one  essential  modification 
introduced  by  the  Assyrians  into  the  Babylonian 
religion,  which  they  otherwise  adopted  wholesale, 
just  as  they  brought  it  from  their  Southern  home. 
Like  their  Hebrew  brethren,  they  arrived  at  the 
perception  of  the  Divine  Unity;  but  while  the  wise 
men  of  the  Hebrews  took  their  stand  uncomprom- 
isingly on  monotheism  and  imposed  il  on  their  re- 
luctant followers  with  a  fervor  and  energy  that  no 
resistance  or  backsliding  could  abate,  the  Assyrian 
priests  thought  to  reconcile  the  truth,  which  they  but 
imperfectly  grasped,  with  the  old  traditions  and  the 

*  G.   Rawlinson,  "  Five  Ancient  Monarchies,"  Vol.  I.  p.  227  (edit. 
1862). 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


5 


established  religious  system.  They  retained  the  en- 
tire Babylonian  pantheon,  with  all  its  theory  of  suc- 
cessive emanations,  its  two  great  triads,  its  five  plan- 
etary deities,  and  the  host  of  inferior  divinities,  but, 
at  the  head  of  them  all,  and  above  them  all,  they 
placed  the  one  God  and  Master  whom  they  recog- 
nized as  supreme.  They  did  not  leave  him  wrapped 
in  uncertainty  and  lost  in  misty  remoteness,  but 
gave  him  a  very  distinct  individuality  and  a  personal 
name :  they  called  him  AsSHUR ;  and  whether  the 
city  were  named  after  the  god  or  the  god  after  the 
city,  and  then  the  land  and  people  after  both, — a 
matter  of  dispute  among  scholars, — one  fact  remains, 
and  that  the  all-important  one  :  that  the  Assyrians 
identified  themselves  with  their  own  national  god, 
called  themselves  "  his  people,"  believed  themselves 
to  be  under  his  especial  protection  and  leadership  in 
peace  and  war.  His  name  almost  always  heads 
the  lists  of  ''great  gods"  who  are  usually  invoked, 
sometimes  alone,  sometimes  with  their  ''great"  or 
"  exalted  consorts  "  at  the  beginning  of  long  inscrip- 
tions. Here  is  such  an  invocation,  the  opening  of 
a  very  famous  inscription,  in  which  Tiglath-Pileser 
I.,  a  mighty  king  and  Assyria's  first  great  conqueror, 
narrates  some  of  his  campaigns:  ''  AssJiur,  the  great 
lord,  ivho  rules  the  host  of  the  gods,  who  endows  with 
sceptre  and  crown,  establishes  royalty, —  Bel,  the  lord, 
the  king  of  all  the  Anunnaki,"  father  of  gods,  lord 
of  countries, — Sin,  the  wise,  lord  of  the  crown,  the 
exalted  in  luminous  brilliancy, — Shamash,  the  judge 

*  See  the  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  250;     ''Five  Monarchies,"  Vol. 
I.  p.  300. 


5  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

of  heaven  and  earth,  who  sees  the  evil  deeds  of  the 

enemies Raman,  the  mighty,  who  floods  the 

countries  of  the  enemies,  their  lands  and  their 
houses, — Nineb,  the  strong,  who  destroys  evil-doers 
and  enemies  and  lets  men  find  what  their  heart  de- 
sires,— Ishtar,  the  first-born  of  the  gods,  who  makes 
battles  fierce  ;— Ye  great  gods,  the  governors  of 
heaven  and  earth,  whose  onslaught  is  battle  and  de- 
struction, who  have  exalted  the  royalty  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser,  the  great  one,  the  beloved  of  your  hearts," 
etc.,  etc.  We  shall  have  to  return  to  this  inscrip- 
tion, for  many  reasons  one  of  the  most  important. 
But  this  extract  is  sufficient  to  show  the  precedence 
and  supremacy  to  w^hich  Asshur  is  considered  as  un- 
questionably entitled. 

5.  Quite  as  often  he  is  mentioned  alone.  Indeed, 
when  a  king  tells  of  an  expedition,  undertaking,  or 
public  act  of  his  of  any  importance  he  generally 
refers  it  in  some  way  to  Asshur  as  the  distinctive 
and  representative  national  and  supreme  God, — to 
his  service,  or  law>  or  direct  command  or  inspiration. 
And  herein  again,  as  Mr.  G.  Rawlinson  justly  re- 
marks, the  Assyrian  spirit  shows  itself  nearly  akin 
to  that  of  the  Hebrews,  who,  in  the  same  manner, 
refer  all  their  public  acts,  from  a  raid  on  a  neighbor- 
ing tribe  to  a  wholesale  slaughter  of  prisoners,  to  the 
service  and  command  of  Yahveh  (Jehovah).  The 
Assyrian  kings  never  fail  to  attribute  their  victories 
and  conquests  to  Asshur,  whose  emblem  precedes 
them  in  battle,  borne  aloft  on  their  standards. 
(See  No.  i.)  Indeed,  there  are  two  or  three  stand- 
ing expressions  used  to  record  such  events;  they  are 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR.  j 

these :  **  The  majesty  of  Asshur,  my  lord,  over- 
whehned  them  ;  they  came  and  kissed  my  feet ;  " 
or,  *'  The  fear  of  Asshur  overwhehned  the  inhabit- 
ants:  my  feet  they  took  ;  "  or,  "  Exceeding  fear  of 
Asshur  my  lord  overwhelmed  them  :  they  came  and 
took  my  feet."  These  extracts  are  taken  from  in- 
scriptions of  different  kings  and  centuries  widely  re- 
moved from  each  other,  and  might  be  multiplied 
without  end.  They  answer  exactly  to  the  biblical 
phrase,  ^'Yahveh  delivered  them  into  their  hands;" 
or  this:  '^  The  fame  of  David  went  out  into  all  the 
lands,  and  Yahveh  brought  the  fear  of  him  on  all 
nations."  An  expedition  to  conquer  a  neighboring 
territory  or  to  punish  rebels  is  undertaken  at  the 
express  command  of  Asshur,  or  of  ''  Asshur  and  the 
great  gods  "  ;  and  in  order  to  propagate  their  laws, 
or  to  chastise  those  who  ''  did  not  keep  their  oaths 
to  the  great  gods,"  or  '*  hardened  their  hearts  and 
disregarded  the  will  of  Asshur,  the  god,  my  crea- 
tor." Thus  Tiglath-Pileser  I.  says,  in  the  inscrip- 
tion already  mentioned :  ''  Asshur,  and  the  great 
gods  who  have  exalted  my  royalty,  who  have  en- 
dowed me  with  strength  and  power,  cominanded  me  to 
enlarge  the  boundaries  of  their  land,  and  gave  into  my 
hand  their  mighty  weapons,  the  whirlwind  of  battle  : 
countries,  mountains,  cities,  and  kings, /<?r^  to  As- 
shur, I  overthrew,  and  conquered  their  territories." 
Another  king,  who  reigns  five  hundred  years  later, 
represents  Asshur  and  the  gods  as  speaking  to  him 
by  a  direct  message  :  ^'  Then  to  Asshur,  to  Sin, 
Shamash,  Bel,  Nebo,  Nergal,  Ishtar  of  Nineveh, 
and  Ishtar  of  Arbela  I  lifted  my  hands.  They  ac- 
cepted my  prayer.     In  their  gracious  favor  an   en- 


g  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

couraging  message  they  sent  to  me  :  '  Go  !  fear  not ! 
We  march  at  thy  side  !  We  aid  thy  expedition.'  " 
All  this  forcibly  recalls  to  the  mind  such  biblical 
passages  as  the  following:  ''And  the  Lord  said 
unto  Joshua,  Stretch  the  spear  that  is  in  thine  hand 
toward  it,  for  1  will  give  it  into  thine  hand  "  (Joshua, 
viii.  18)  ;  or  still  more  this  one,  to  which,  moreover, 
many  parallel  ones  might  be  found  with  little 
searching:  "And  David  inquired  of  God,  Shall  I 
go  up  against  the  Philistines  ?  And  wilt  thou  de- 
hver  them  into  mine  hand?  And  the  Lord  said  to 
him,  Go  up,  for  I  will  deliver  them  into  thine 
hand.  .  .  .  David,  therefore,  did  as  God  commanded 
him,  and  they  smote  the  host  of  the  Philistines  " 
(i  Chronicles,  xiv.  10,  ff.). 

6.  Further,  the  Assyrian  kings,  when  they  inflict 
more  than  usually  cruel  treatment  on  their  captives, 
be  they  individuals  or  nations,  are  wont  to  justify  it 
by  their  religious  zeal,  nay,  to  glory  in  the  thorough- 
ness with  which  they  fulfil  what  they  represent  as 
the  direct  commands  of  Asshur  and  the  gods  of 
Assyria.  ''They  revolted  against  me,"  says  the 
often-quoted  Asshurbanipal  of  the  people  of  Accad, 
Aram,  and  others,  "  and  by  command  of  Asshur 
and  Belit,  and  the  great  gods,  my  protectors,  on^the 
whole  of  them  I  trampled/'  Immediately  after 
this  he  mentions  that  he  had,  in  a  former  expedi- 
tion, cut  off  the  head  of  his  captive  enemy,  the  king' 
of  Elam,  "  by  command  of  Asshur."  As  to  the 
rebels  in  Accad,  he  boasts  that  "  those  men  who  ut- 
tered curses  against  Asshur,  my  god,  and  devised 
evil  against  me,  the  prince,  his  worshipper,  their 
tongues   I  pulled  out "  (a  common  form  of  torture 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR.  g 

repeatedly  represented  on  the  sculptures) ;  of  the 
rest  of  the  rebels,  he  threw  a  large  number  alive 
into  a  deep  pit  or  ditch,  dug  in  the  midst  of  the 
city,  among  the  stone  lions  and  bulls  of  the  palace 
gates,  after  cutting  off  their  limbs  and  causing  these 
'*  to  be  eaten  by  dogs,  bears,  eagles,  vultures,  birds  of 
heaven,  and  fishes  of  the  deep."  ''  By  these  things 
which  were  done,"  he  concludes  with  religious  com- 
placency, *'  I  satisfied  the  hearts  of  the  great  gods, 
my  lords."  And  when  he  further  relates  how  he 
bound  another  captive  chief  in  chains  with  dogs  and 
thus  kept  him  "  in  the  great  gate  in  the  midst  of 
Nineveh,"  he  calls  this  treatment  a  ''  judgment  on 
him  to  satisfy  the  law  of  Asshur  and  the  great  gods, 
my  lords."  We  see  the  exact  parallel  to  this  in  the 
annals  of  the  Jews'  wars  and  conquests.  They  are 
continually  enjoined,  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  by 
their  leaders  and  priests,  to  put  to  the  sword  the 
vanquished  populations,  as  a  preservative  against 
the  contagion  of  their  idolatrous  religions.  "  Then 
you  shall  rise  up  from  the  ambush,"  says  Joshua  to 
the  Israelite  warriors,  '*  and  seize  upon  the  city,  for 
the  Lord  your  God  will  deliver  it  into  your  hand. 
And  it  shall  be,  when  ye  have  taken  the  city,  that 
ye  shall  set  the  city  on  fire  :  according  to  the  com- 
jjtandment  of  the  Lord  shall  ye  do  "  (Joshua,  viii.  7-8). 
Perhaps  the  most  memorable  occasion  is  that  on 
Avhich  King  Saul  is  declared  to  have  forfeited  the 
crown  and  the  favor  of  God  for  having  saved  one 
life  and  reserved  some  cattle.  These  are  the  instruc- 
tions which  the  prophet  Samuel  delivers  to  Saul  as 
be  sends  him  on  ^n  expedition   against  the  Amale- 


J  O  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

kites,  prefacing  his  words  with  the  usual  solemn 
"  Thus  saith  Yahveh  Shebaoth(the  Lord  of  hosts)," 
which  stamps  them  as  divine  orders:  "Now  go 
and  smite  Amalek,  and  utterly  destroy  all  that  they 
have,  and  spare  them  not  ;  ditt  slay  both  man  and 
zvoinan,  infant  and  suckling,  ox  and  sheep,  camel 
and  ass."  Saul  did  smite  the  Amalekites,  and  "  ut- 
terly destroyed  all  the  people  with  the  edge  of  the 
sword,"  but  spared  Agag  their  king,  who  had  been 
taken  alive,  and  the  best  of  the  herds.  For  this 
disobedience  Samuel  declared  to  Saul :  ''  Thou  hast 
rejected  the  word  of  the  Lord,  and  the  Lord  hath 
rejected  thee  from  being  king  over  Israel,"  then 
calling  for  Agag  to  be  brought  to  him,  ^'Samuel 
hewed  Agag  in  pieces  before  Yahveh''  (i  Samuel,  xv.). 
7.  But  if  both  the  Hebrews  and  Assyrians  referred 
their  military  acts  to  direct  divine  command  and 
guidance,  the  immense  power  thus  created  was 
very  differently  distributed  in  both.  With  the 
Hebrews  it  was  all  in  the  hands  of  the  priesthood 
and  prophets,  and  scarcely  any  of  it  rested  with  the 
kings  when  royalty  was  established.  The  kings  were 
but  instruments,  one  might  almost  say  servants,  of 
the  priests  and  prophets,  elected,  anointed  by  them, 
and  by  them  deposed  if  not  found  sufficiently  sub- 
missive. Even  to  offer  a  sacrifice  before  the  people 
was  not  lawful  for  the  king  ;  it  was  the  priest's  privi- 
lege, and  Samuel  sternly  reproves  Saul  for  his  pre- 
sumption in  taking  the  office  on  himself  on'one  occa- 
sion (i  Samuel,  xv.).  Things  were  very  different  in 
Assyria.  The  king  was  also  the  priest — still  the 
patesi  of  old  times.     He  sometimes  expressly  calls 


THE  risp:  of  ASSHUR.  I  I 

himself  ''  High-priest  of  Asshur."  Rut  only  of  As- 
shur,  the  one  supreme  god.  Royalty  on  earth  is 
the  representative  of  the  ruler  in  heaven.  The  na- 
tional god  and  the  national  leader  together  are  the 
greatness  and  safeguard  of  the  state  ;  they  are  in 
direct  communion  with  each  other,  and  nothing  can 
come  between  them.  The  monuments  give  the 
amplest  and  most  conclusive  proof  of  this  relation- 
ship. 

8.    In    the    sculptured    scenes    representing    inci- 
dents from  the  career       ,„(.,    ^^,„  >-.^^ 
of  a  monarch — whose   j}^}iy^^^^^^:^^&lsi^^  ,:>. 

person       is      always  £:2^^^^^|^^^^Bi&. 

known    by    his    rich  '[:'::.;3 

jx-  --^^ _ 

robes,  hicrh  head-tire,  i>  •■;•,- -^^r-*^  x5:iijiiiv>t\r^^  ,/  '^si^^^A^.' 

and  his  beardless  at- 


•■  •,- •''*S=^---']ll"n:^.£lUi'lllll>V,lV\x-^,  ;   i 


'^^K 


tendants  — we    often  ^'--EC-T^^PM 

see     hovering  above     '■^^^]^-:^i''^h^  ■■:::^^^\,g^ 

his  head,  or   just    m     i. — emblem  of  the  god  asshur. 

front  of  him,  a   peCU-  (Perrotand  Chipiez.) 

liar  object  :  mostly  a  human  figure,  ending  in  a  feath- 
ered appendage  like  a  bird's  tail — a  dove's,  it  is 
thought — from  the  waist  downwards,  and  framed  in, 
or  passed  through,  a  circle  or  wheel  furnished  with 
wings.  It  is  the  emblem  of  Asshur,  and  it  is  seen,  if 
not  above  that  of  the  sacred  tree  or  an  altar  on  which 
sacrifice  is  being  offered,  accompanying  only  the 
king,  never  any  one  else.  Its  attitude  also  answers 
to  the  character  of  the  scene  in  the  midst  of  which 
the  god  appears  to  protect  and  consecrate  the  royal 
presence.  If  a  battle,  he  is  represented  as  drawing 
a  bow  before  the  king ;  the  arrow  which  he  is  send- 


12 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


ing  into  the  midst  of  the  enemies  plainly  symbolizes 
the  destruction  and  fear  which  the  inscriptions  de- 
scribe him  as  bringing  on  all  his  foes.  If  a  peaceful 
solemnity — for  instance,  a  triumphal  procession,  a 
religious  ceremony — the  bow  is  lowered  and  one 
hand  uplifted  unarmed,  an  attitude  in  which  the  king 
himself  is  frequently  represented  on  similar  occa- 
sions   (see    Nos.    i   and  2);  or  there    is    no  bow   at 


,A^ 


?:^,-. 


*      i(  'v  ::.:^  ■--.----'■J  i.v  „# 


i^V, 


:l 


ill 


^  X  '^^'JJ^^ 


2, — WINGED   DISK    (EMBLEM    OF   ASSHUR). 
(Perrot  and  Chipiez.) 

all,  and  one  hand  holds  out  a  wreath,  probably  an 
emblem  of  peace  and  prosperity.  Sometimes  the 
human  figure  is  absent,  and  the  simplified  emblem 
consists  only  of  a  winged  circle  or  disk,  with  the 
bird's  tail,  which  is  never  omitted.  In  this  form  it 
strikingly  resembles  the  Egyptian  symbol  of  the  su- 
preme deity,  which  is  also  a  winged  disk,  but  with- 
out the  tail,  while  the  wings  are  those  of  the  spar- 
row-hawk, which  was  the  sacred  bird  of  the  Egyp- 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


13 


tians,  just  as  the  dove  was  that  of  the  Assyrians, 
and  of  several  other  Semitic  and  Canaanitic  nations. 
The  two  peoples  were  known  to  each  other,  and 
came  in  contact  at  an  earlier  date  than  the  earliest 
to  which  any  sculptures  can  be  referred,  and  it  is 
not  impossible  that  the  Assyrian  priests,  wishing  to 
embody  with  the  rest  of  their  religious  system  a 
conception  which  they  did  not  inherit  from  the  old 
Chaldean  home,  borrowed  the  emblem  from  the 
Egyptians,  whose  fame  for  wisdom  in  such  things 
was  of  long  standing.  It  may  perhaps  not  be  too 
bold  to  conjecture  that  the  Asshur-emblem  may  in 
reality  have  been  a  compound  one,  intended  to  con- 
vey the  idea  of  the  universe  embodied  in  its  ruling 
powers — its  gods,  to  speak  the  language  of  anti- 
quity— being  contained  in  the  one  supreme  God- 
head. The  disk,  we  must  remember,  symbolizes 
the  sun  in  all  mythologies;  the  dove  is  the  bird  of 
Ishtar,  the  goddess  of  earthly  productive  nature — 
Heaven  and  Earth,  the  eternal  couple  !  And  when 
we  see  the  sacred  emblem  hovering  over  the 
mystic  tree  of  life  (as  in  Nos.  3  and  4),  the  inten- 
tion seems  more  obvious  still  and  the  presenta- 
tion of  it  complete.  Within  the  disk  we  some- 
times see  five  smaller  balls : — the  suggestion  of  the 
five  planets,  strikingly  emphasizing  the  conception 
of  heaven,  is  almost  irresistible  ;  and  the  unique  form 
— a  small  head  on  each  wing — in  which  the  emblem 
appears  on  the  cylinder  seal  of  King  Sennacherib 
(No.  3)  could  scarcely  be  explained  at  all  on  any 
other  grounds ;  while,  if  we  see  in  it  a  personation 
embracing   the    Supreme    Triad    and    the   feminine 


14 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


form  of  Nature — /.  e.,  of  the  entire  universe  in  its 
twofold  essence,  masculine  and  feminine — it  explains 
itself,  and  almost  seems  to  correspond  in  deep  sig- 
nificance to  the  Hebrew  plural  ''  Elohim,"  as  a  name 
for  the  one  indivisible  God."^  A  no  less  remarkable 
instance  of  the  compound  nature  of  the  Asshur  em- 
blem is  a  cylinder  of,  it  is  thought,  the  ninth  century 
B.C.  The  king,  (represented,  for  symmetry's  sake,  in 
double),  attended  by  one  of  those  eagle-headed 
winged-protecting  genii  so  familiar  to  students  of  the 

sculptures,  worships  be- 
fore the  sacred  tree, 
above  which  hovers  the 
emblem  of  Asshur  in 
its  completest  form ; 
from  the  circle  depends 
a  sort  of  string  in  a 
wavy  line,  and  as  it  ends 
in  a  well-drawn  fork — 
the  undoubted  emblem 
of  Raman,  the  god  of  the  atmosphere— it  may  be 
reasonably  supposed  to  represent  the  lightning. 
That  the  king  holds  it  in  his  hand  unharmed  only 
expresses  the  sacredness  of  his  person  and  his  in- 
timate connection  with  the  national  god.  This 
supposition  would  by  no  means  contradict  the  ex- 
planation commonly  given  of  the  strings  as  sym- 
bolizing the  bond  between  the  god  and  king  cre- 
ated by  prayer.  Both  explanations  are  perfectly 
compatible.     It  is  the  fork  which  so  strongly  sug- 


3. — CYLINDER   SEAL   OF    KING    SEN- 
NACHERIB. 
(Perrot  and  Chipiez.) 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  354. 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


15 


eests    Raman.     The    sacredness    of   the    svmbol    is 
impressed   on  us  even  by   the   robes    he    wears  on 
the  sculptures,  and  which  have  as  much  a  priestly 
as    a    royal    character,    since    not  only  the  embroi- 
dery   on    his    breast    reproduces    the    winged    disk 
and  sacred  tree,  but  even  accessory    details  of   his 
costume  are    ornamented   with    symbolical   designs 
of   the    same    religious   nature    (see    No.  4),    which 
supply  much  of   the  decorations  also  of   his  dwell- 
ing, at  least  of  the 
public      apartments 
therein.     It     would 
almost    seem     that 
the    king    was  him- 
self ranked  with  the 
gods,  as  subject    to 
Asshur  alone,  or  at 
least     held    worthy 
to      associate     with 
them,    if    we  judge 
from  a  cylinder    on 
which  a  royal    wor- 
shipper is  faced  on  the  other  side  of  the  sacred  tree 
by  no  less  a  personage  than  Ea-Oannes,  that  ancient 
and  much  revered  divine  being  who,  like  him,  does 
homage  to  the  holy  emblem.     Officiating  and  sacri- 
ficing priests  are  frequently  encountered  on  sculpt- 
ures and  cylinders,  but  never  in  the  presence  of  the 
sovereign,  or  then  only  as  following  and  attending  on 
him  :  nothing  and  no  one  could  ever  come  between 
the    king   and  '' Asshur,  his  lord."     Yet    the  other 
"  great    gods  "  were  also  called  upon  to  protect  and 


4. — ASSYRIAN    CYLINDER    SEAL. 
(Perrot  and  Chipiez.) 


1 6  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

consecrate  the  royal  persons  ;  we  see  kings  wearing, 
as  a  necklace,  the  five  secondary  divine  emblems, 
probably  in  gold.  These  were  :  a  sun,  a  moon- 
crescent,  a  star,  Raman's  lightning-fork,  and  Bel's 
horned  cap — the  headdress  adorned  with  bull's  horns, 
which  is  not  only  associated  with  Bel,  but  gener- 
ally symbolizes  divine  lordliness  and  power,  and  as 
such  is  worn  by  Asshur  himself,  by  the  winged  bulls 
and  lions,  the  mighty  guardians  of  the  palace  gates, 
and  by  the  winged  good  genii  (see  No.  35).  The 
same  emblems  we  see  encircling  the  head  of  kings 
on  their  sculptured  images  (see  No.  46).  One 
such  royal  slab  or  *'  stele,''  as  such  representations 
are  technically  called,  is  of  additional  interest  from 
the  altar  which  was  found  in  front  of  and  just  below 
it,  and  which  seems  to  suggest  that  the  monarch, 
either  in  his  lifetime  or  after  his  death,  received 
divine  honors,  or  at  least  was  considered  as  presid- 
ing" over  relieious  ceremonies  in  effisrv  when  not 
present  in  person.  There  would  be  nothing  improb- 
able in  either  supposition  after  all  the  indications 
we  have  of  the  royal  sacredness  ;  and,  truly,  Shakes- 
peare might  have  had  the  Assyrian  monarchs  in  his 
mind  when  he  spoke  of  the  divinity  that  doth  hedge 
a  king. 

9.  After  dwelling  so  long  and  amply  on  the  most 
important  and  distinctive  feature  of  the  Assyrian  re- 
ligion,— the  conception  and  worship  of  Asshur, — the 
rest  of  the  pantheon  can  be  considered  in  very  few 
words,  since  it  is  mainly  unchanged  from  the  Baby- 
lonian, and  only  a  few  deviations  have  to  be  pointed 
out.     In  the  first  place,  Gibil,  the  Fire-god,  is  heard 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


17 


of  no  more.     Then  Bel-Marduk,  transformed  from 
the  benevolently  busy  Meridug,  so  dear  to  old  Shu- 
mir, — Bel-Marduk,  the  chief  and    tutelary  deity  of 
the  later  Chaldean  empire  and  of  the  great  Babylon, 
where   his  temple  was  reckoned  and    long    remem- 
bered as  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world, — had  to  be 
content  in  the  sister  kingdom  with  a  very  secondary 
position,  that  of  ruler  of  the  planet  Jupiter.     Very 
early  Assyrian  kings  include  him  in  their  opening 
invocations,    and    sometimes    even    make    separate 
mention  of  him  in  their  inscriptions ;  but  it  is  only 
from  old  associations,  and  the  habit  dies  out  as  the 
national  Asshur  increases  in   importance.     Marduk 
does  not  receive  the  compliment  of  a  single  tempie 
in  Assyria,  and  though  the  latest  kings  once  more 
make  his  name  prominent  in  their  documents,  they 
pay  him   this  respect  on  account  of   their  renewed 
close  connection  with  Babylon  and  partly  to  concili- 
ate   the    Babylonians.     His   father,   Ea,   fares    even 
worse.    Though  he  retains  his  place  in  the  great  triad 
— Anu,  Ea,  Bel — he  practically  is  consigned  to  obliv_ 
ion,  and  the  very  rare  and  cold,  if  respectful,  mention 
which  is  made  of  him  only  makes  the  fact  more  ap- 
parent.    He  also  cannot  boast  a  single  temple  in  As- 
syria, while  Anu,  who  in  a  great  measure  shares  this 
neglect,  had  one  at  least.     True,  that  one  was  not  in 
either  Nineveh  or  Kalah,  the  modern  capitals,  but  in 
Asshur,  the  old-empire  city,  and  pointed  to   a  time 
when  the  connection  with  the  mother  country  and 
its  traditions    had    scarcely  as   yet   been    loosened. 
'*  There  is,  however,  reason  to  believe,"  according  to 

some   writers,  ''  that  Anu  was  occasionally  honored 
2 


ig  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

with  a  shrine  in  a  temple  dedicated  to  another 
deity."*  Ishtar,  on  the  other  hand,  was  as  great  a 
favorite  with  the  Assyrians  as  with  the  empire  of 
the  South.  Her  two  principal  temples  were  in 
Nineveh  and  Arbela  (Arba-ILU,  "  the  city  of  four 
gods  ").  In  the  latter  she  was  worshipped  pre-em- 
inently in  her  martial  character  as  the  goddess  of 
war  and  battle,  the  inspirer  of  heroic  deeds,  and  the 
giver  of  victory;  while  in  Nineveh,  it  was  her  fem- 
inine, voluptuous  aspect  which  predominated,  and 
she  was  essentially  the  goddess  of  love,  of  nature, 
and  all  delights.  So  marked  became  this  division, 
that  she,  so  to  speak,  split  herself  into  two  distinct 
deities,  and  the  mention  of  her  in  the  invocations  is 
generally  twofold, — as  ''Ishtar  of  Nineveh"  and 
"  Ishtar  of  Arbela," — and  the  two  fortnights  of  the 
month  are  alternately  consecrated  to  her.  This  dis- 
tinction must  have  been  assisted  by  the  difference 
of  the  goddess's  garb  and  attributes  in  the  two 
characters,  and  thus  have  slipped  into  pure  idola- 
try. As  she  was,  in  the  astronomical-religious  sys- 
tem, the  ruler  of  the  planet  we  call  Venus,  the  star 
among  the  five  divine  emblems  (see  above")  must 
have  been  specially  intended  for  her.  It  is  the  more 
probable,  that  her  name  originally  means  "  the  %o6i- 
d^ss'' par  cxcelloicCy  diX\d  that  in  the  Assyro-Baby- 
lonian  writing  (the  same  for  both  countries,  like  the 
language)  the  sign  of  a  star  stands  for  the  idea  and 
the  word  "  deity,"  whether  "god"  or  ''goddess." 
When   the  real,  visible   stars  are  meant,  the  sign  is 

*  G.  Rawlinson,  "  Five  Monarchies,"  Vol.  II.  p.  241, 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR.  jq 

repeated  three  times  in  a  peculiar  group,  a  very 
conclusive  proof  of  the  originally  astral  (or  astro- 
nomical) nature  of  the  religion.  Another  interesting 
detail  in  the  same  direction  is  that,  the  planet  Venus 
appearing  in  the  evening,  soon  after  sunset,  and 
then  again  in  the  early  morning,  just  before  dawn, 
it  was  called  Ishtar  at  night  and  Belit  at  dawn,  as 
a  small  tablet  expressly  informs  us  ;  a  distinction 
which,  apparently  confusing,  rather  tends  to  confirm 
the  fundamental  identity  between  the  two, — Ishtar, 
"  the  goddess,"  and  Belit,  "  the  lady."  ^  The  other 
gods  changed  little  in  their  migration  from  the  Per- 
sian Gulf  to  the  foot  of  the  Zagros  and  the  Arme- 
nian Mountains ;  and  besides,  we  shall  occasionally 
meet  them  as  our  narrative  advances,  when  it  will 
be  time  enough  to  note  any  peculiarity  they  may 
display,  or  influence  they  may  exert. 

lo.  Whether  Assyria  in  its  infancy  was  a  mere  de- 
pendency of  the  mother  country,  ruled,  may  be,  by 
governors  sent  from  Babylon,  or  whether  it  was 
from  the  first  an  independent  colony  (as  the  young 
bee-swarm  when  it  has  flown  from  the  old  hive),  has 
never  yet  been  ascertained.  There  have  been  no 
means  of  doing  so,  as  there  is  no  narrative  monu- 
mental inscription  earlier  than  iioo  B.C.-  Still,  all 
things  considered,  the  latter  supposition  appears  the 
more  probable  one.  The  Semitic  emigrants  who 
retired  to  the  distant  northern  settlement  of  Aus- 
har,  possibly  before  the  Elamitic  conquerors,  took 
their  departure  at  a  time  when  the  mother  country 


*  S^e  the  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  245. 


20  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

* 

was  too  distracted  by  wars  and  the  patriotic  strug- 
gle against  the  hated  foreigners  to  exercise  much 
control  or  supervision  over  its  borders ;  and  they 
will  have  experienced  as  little  of  both  as  did  their 
brethren  of  Ur,  when  they  wandered  forth  into  the 
steppes  of  Canaan.  The  bond  must  have  been 
merely  a  moral  one,  that  of  community  in  culture, 
language,  and  religion — a  bond  that  could  not  pre- 
vent rivalry  as  soon  as  the  young  country's  increas- 
ing strength  allowed  it,  and,  as  a  consequence,  a 
frequently  hostile  attitude.  At  all  events,  border 
feuds  must  have  begun  early  and  proved  trouble- 
some, from  the  indefiniteness  of  the  natural  boun- 
dary, if  the  slight  elevation  of  the  alluvial  line  may 
be  so  termed,  and  the  first  positive  record  we  have 
of  Assyria  as  a  political  power  is  one  which  shows 
us  a  king  of  Assyria  and  a  king  of  Kar-Dunyash 
(Babylon)  ^  making  a  treaty  in  order  to  determine 
the  boundaries  of  the  two  countries,  and  giving 
each  other  pledges  for  the  observance  thereof :  this 
happened  about  1450  B.C.,  and  the  successors  of 
the  two  kings  renewed  the  treaty  about  1400  B.C. 
The  friendship  was  so  close  at  the  time,  that 
BURNA-BURYASH,  the  Babylonian  king  f  (of  the  Cos- 
saean  dynasty),  :j:  married  the  Assyrian's  daughter  ; 
an  event  which  was  the  indirect  cause  of  Assyria's 
first  armed  interference  in  the  affairs  of  the  South. 
For  after  Burnaburiash's  death  there  was  a  revolt 
among    the    Kasshi.      They   rose    against    his   son 


*  See  the  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  286. 
t  See  Ibid.  p.  228. 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR.  ^  I 

(perhaps  on  account  of  his  half-foreign  parentage?) 
and  slew  him,  after  which  they  raised  to  the 
kingdom  a  usurper, — *' a  man  of  low  parentage," 
the  tablet  calls  him.  Asshur-Uballit,  the  then 
reigning  king  of  Assyria,  made  a  descent  on  Babylon 
to  avenge  his  kinsman's  fate,  defeated  the  rebels, 
and  placed  another  son  of  Burnaburiash  on  the 
throne.  Having  inflicted  this  neighborly  correc- 
tion he  returned  to  his  own  realm,  and  things  re- 
mained as  they  had  been.  He  may  possibly  not 
have  been  displeased  at  this  opportunity  of  assert- 
ing the  northern  kingdom's  power  and  importance 
and  of  establishing  a  precedent  flattering  to  its 
new-born  dignity. 

II.  Not  quite  two  hundred  years  before  these 
events,  we  are  confronted  by  the  name  of  Asshur  in 
a  rather  unexpected  quarter.  It  occurs  on  an  Egyp- 
tian list  of  Asiatic  nations  who  sent  tribute  or  pres- 
ents to  the  great  Egyptian  conqueror  Dhutmes 
HI.,  who  repeatedly  overran  the  immense  region  be- 
tween the  Nile  and  the  Euphrates — not  twice  or 
three  times,  but  fourteen  times  in  seventeen  years. 
Egypt  was  just  appearing  on  the  world's  stage  in 
the  character  of  an  invader  and  conqueror,  and, 
though  a  very  old  nation,  the  part  she  played  so 
brilliantly  was  new  to  her.  The  Egyptians,  from 
their  remotest  antiquity  (and  that,  as  we  saw,"^ 
takes  us  back  quite  or  nearly  as  far  as  the  antiquity 
of  Chaldea),  had  always  dwelt  secluded  in  their  won- 
derful Nile-valley.     This  valley,  making  up  in  length 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,'-  p.  364. 


^ 2  'THE  STORY  OF  ASS YRIA . 

what  it  wanted  in  width,' gave  them  sufficient  room 
in  which  to  Hve  and  increase,  to  be  industrious 
and  prosperous,  and  to  develop,  in  the  course  of 
some  three  thousand  years,  that  magnificent  civiHza- 
tion,  that  profound  national  wisdom,  which  have 
been  the  marvel  of  the  world,  and  are  becoming 
more  and  more  so  with  every  conquest  of  the  pickaxe 
and  shovel — those  humble  instruments  which  are 
as  magicians'  wands  in  the  hands  of  the  modern 
explorer,  to  call  the  dead  to  life  and  reconstruct 
cities  and  kingdoms.  Not  only  were  the  Egyptians 
proud  of  their  race,  they  considered  it  as  something 
sacred,  and  themselves  as  a  nation  set  apart  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  for  purity  and  holiness.  With 
such  an  opinion  of  themselves  they  naturally  had  a 
horror  of  foreigners,  mere  contact  or  intercourse 
with  whom  was  to  them  pollution,  and  that  alone 
would  have  sufficed  to  deter  them  from  travelling 
or  annexing  other  lands. 

12.  But  absolute  seclusion  is  unnatural  and  an  im- 
possibility, as  well  for  nations  as  for  individuals,  and 
the  Egyptians  had  to  open — grudgingly,  ungra- 
ciously, but  still  to  open — at  least  one  corner  of  their 
sacred  land  to  their  Canaanitic  and  Semitic  neighbors 
— the  north-east  corner  by  the  sea,  which,  moreover, 
it  would  have  been  difficult  to  close  against  stray 
wanderers  from  the  desert  coming  across  the  sandy 
wilderness  of  the  Sinai  peninsula,  since,  on  that 
side,  Egypt  has  absolutely  no  natural  barrier  or 
protection.  That  district,  then,  rendered  very  fer- 
tile by  the  many  arms  of  the  Nile,  had  been  for  cent- 
uries   inhabited    in    great  part  by  foreigners.     No- 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUK. 


n 


madic   tribes  who  came,  in  times  of  drought,   with 
their    thirsty,   dwindled   flocks,  were  admitted    and 
allotted    pastures,    on    which    they    settled    perma- 
nently,   unless   they   preferred,  after  awhile,   to  re- 
turn to  their  steppes  in  Syria  or  their  oases  in  Ara- 
bia.     It    was  thus  that    Abraham    visited    Egypt : 
''And    Abram  journeyed,    going    still    toward    the 
South.     And  there  was  a  famine  in   the   land,  and 
Abram  went  down  into   Egypt,   to  sojourn    there; 
for  the  famine  was  grievous  in   the  land"  (Genesis, 
xii.  9-10).       Thus   also    his  descendants    went    the 
same  way,  Jacob  and  his  sons,  when   they  entered 
the  land, — a  small  tribe,  little  more  than  a  family, — 
whence  they  were  to  go  forth,  four  hundred  years 
later,  a  nation.     They  say  to  the  Pharaoh :    "  Thy 
servants  are  shepherds,  both  we  and  also  our  fath- 
ers.  .   .   .   To  sojourn  in  the  land  are  we  come  ;  for 
there  is  no  pasture  for  thy  servant's  flocks  ;  for  the 
famine  is  sore  in  the   land   of  Canaan  •  now  there- 
fore, we  pray   thee,   let  thy  servants  dwell    in  the 
land  of  Goshen  "    (Genesis,    xlvii.    3-4).     Traders, 
in  all  probability  mostly  Phoenicians,  dwelt   in  the 
cities,  their  ships  coming  and  going    between    the 
mouths  of  the  Nile  and  the   cities  along  the   Medi- 
terranean coast,  their  caravans  carrying   the    treas- 
ures of  Africa  and  Asia  back  and  forwards  along  the 
great    high-road    which,    skirting   the    sea,     ran    off 
northward   into  the  country  of  the    Lebanon    and 
across  Aram  to  the  Euphrates. 

13.  Thus  a  large  and  powerful  population  was 
formed,  looked  on  by  the  native  Egyptians  with  sus- 
picion and  dislike,  but  tolerated  as  a  necessary  evil, 


24.  ^^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

until  a  day  came  when  their  prophetic  instinct  was 
justified  and  a  great  disaster  befell  them   from   that 
obnoxious  quarter.     The  country  was  invaded  and 
conquered  by  a  swarm  of  those  Semitic  tribes,  rovers 
of  the  desert,  like  the  Bedouins  of  the  present  day, 
whom  the  Egyptians  contemptuously  designated  by 
the  sweeping  name  of  SlIASUS,  i.  e.,  "  thieves,  plun- 
derer3."     They  entered  through  the  foreign  district 
in  the  north-east,  from  the  peninsula  of  Sinai,  and 
surely  must  have  been  assisted    by  their    wealthy 
and  cultured  kinsfolk,  for  without  such    assistance 
semi-barbarous  nomadic  tribes  could  scarcely  have 
managed  more  than   a  clever  plundering   raid,  cer- 
tainly not  organized  a  systematic  invasion.     Much 
less  could  they  have  established  a  permanent  rule  and 
supplanted  the  native   kings  by  a   dynasty  of  their 
own,  which  maintained  itself  several  hundred  years. 
This  dynasty  is   familiarly  known   in  history  as  the 
''  Shepherd  Kings,"  a  translation  of  the  Egyptian 
Hyksos  C'/ij/k" — king,  "  s/ws" — shepherd),  a  name 
probably  given  them  in  scornful  allusion  to  their  for- 
mer pastoral  habits.     It  is  impossible  to  fix  the  date 
of  this  important  revolution,  for  lack  of  inscriptions. 
The  Egyptians,  after   the  expulsion    of   the  Shep- 
herds, were  not  fond  of  recalling  this  long  period 
of  national  humiliation,  and   vindictively  erased   all 
traces   of  it   from  their  monuments,  so  that  hardly 
more  than   a  few  names  of  these  foreign  kings  have 
been  preserved,  as  though  by  mistake,  and  a  recon- 
struction of  their  times  is  not  to  be  thought  of,  at 
least  until    new    discoveries    be    made.     Historians 
have  to  be   content  with  vaguely  placing  the  Hyk- 


THE  RISE     OF  ASSHUR. 


25 


SOS  conquest  anywhere  between  2200  and  2000  B.C. 
This  date,  even  thus  dimly  defined,  coincides  re- 
markably with  a  momentous  epoch  of  Chaldsean  his- 
tory,— that  of  the  Elamitic  conquest  and  rule, — and 
involuntarily  leads  to  the  question  whether  there 
may  not  have  been  a  more  than  casual  connection 
between  the  two  events.  The  ravaging  expeditions 
of  Khudur-Nankhundi  and  his  successors  down  to 
Khudur-Lagamar,'^  must  have  created  a  great  com- 
motion among  the  half-settled  or  wholly  nomadic 
tribes  of  Aram  and  Canaan,  and  brought  about  more 
migrations  than  the  two  which  we  found  to  be  prob- 
ably attributable,  more  or  less  directly,  to  that  cause. 
Once  set  in  motion,  such  tribes  would  naturally  be 
drawn  rather  to  the  South,  vast  and  flat,  than  to  the 
hilly  North,  because  of  their  flocks,  and  thus,  de- 
scending from  year  to  year,  meeting,  and  gathering 
numbers,  would  come  on  the  more  warlike  and  ag- 
gressive Shasus  of  Arabia  and  Sinai.  These,  know- 
ing the  way  into  Egypt,  were  very  likely  to  propose 
a  grand  raid  in  common,  and  the  two  united  masses 
must  have  borne  down  everything  before  them  at 
first  by  sheer  force  of  numbers.  It  was  under  one  of 
the  last  Hyksos  kings  that  Joseph  was  sold  into 
Egypt,  and  his  extraordinary  career  is  in  great  part 
explained  by  this  fact.  Under  a  native  Egyptian 
monarch  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  -a  for- 
eigner to  become  prime  minister — ''  governor  over 
the  land"  (Genesis,  xlii.  6).  The  Semitic  affinities 
between  the  Pharaoh  and  the  young  stranger  must 


*  See  *'  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  219-225. 


26  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

have  been  as  much  in  the  latter's  favor  as  his  skill  in 
interpreting  dreams — (this  accomplishment,  by  the 
way,  an  inheritance  from  Chaldaea).  The  coming 
into  Egypt  of  the  small  Hebrew  tribe  (now  already 
called  Israel) — Jacob,  his  sons  and  grandsons, 
seventy  souls  in  all,  besides  his  sons'  wives  (Genesis, 
xlvii.  26-27) — is  placed  about  1730  B.C.  The  war  of 
independence,  carried  on  by  native  princes  in  the 
South,  was  already  in  progress :  nor  was  the  day  of 
the  national  triumph  very  far  :  the  Shepherds  were 
expelled  and  the  native  monarchy  restored  soon  after 
1700  B.C. — 1662  is  given  as  a  probable  date. 

14.  But  mere  deliverance  from  the  foreign  yoke 
did  not  satisfy  the  Egyptians'  long  pent-up  feel- 
ings of  mortification.  They  thirsted  for  revenge, 
for  retaliation,  and  it  was  this  passionate  desire 
which  transformed  them  from  a  peaceful,  home- 
abiding  people  into  a  race  of  eager,  insatiable  invad- 
ers. Kings  and  people  became  alike  possessed  with 
this  aggressive  spirit,  and  for  several  centuries  lines 
of  warrior-monarchs  succeeded  each  other  on  the 
throne,  among  whom  were  some  of  the  mightiest  con- 
querors the  world  has  seen.  Year  after  year  they 
marched  into  Asia  and  overran  as  well  populous 
countries  as  the  desert  with  its  scattered  nomadic 
tribes,  which  fled  before  them,  more  fortunate  in 
being  able  to  do  so  than  the  dwellers  in  cities  and 
owners  of  farms.  Of  these,  some  thought  themselves 
strong  and  fought,  but  were  generally  vanquished 
and  heavily  ransomed.  Those  who  felt  weak  or 
timid  from  the  possession  of  great  wealth,  brought 
gifts  and  purchased  safety.     These  triumphant  ex- 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


i7 


peditions  were  really  nothing  but  plundering  raids 
on  a  gigantic  scale,  for  the  Egyptian  monarchs  an- 
nexed politically  none  of  the  countries  they  sub 
jected, — never  attempted  to  turn  them  into  Egyptian 
provinces,  only  occasionally  building  a  fort  or  leav 
ing  a  garrison, — but  returned  again  and  again,  partly 
to  revel  in  this  avenging  of  the  old  national  grudge 
— to  *'  wash  their  hearts,"  as  the  Egyptian  inscriptions 
expressively  put  it — partly  to  gather  the  immense 
periodical  spoils  which  they  had  come  to  regard  as 
their  due.  The  people  at  home  got  into  the  habit 
of  looking  for  the  return  of  their  victorious  armies, 
and  would  have  thought  themselves  defrauded,  had 
many  years  elapsed  without  bringing  round  the 
dearly  loved  delights  of  a  triumph  with  all  its  war- 
like pageantry,  its  processions  of  captive  princes,  of 
prisoners  bound  in  gangs,  its  exhibitions  of  booty. 
And  right  willingly  did  the  Pharaohs  indulge  them. 
Fourteen  victorious  and  well-paying  campaigns  in 
seventeen  years — which,  as  we  saw  above,  was  the 
figure  attained  by  Dhutmes  III.,  a  conqueror  mighty 
among  the  mightiest — surely  must  have  satisfied 
both  the  direst  thirst  of  vengeance  and  the  most  in- 
ordinate covetousness. 

15.  In  one  of  these  campaigns  he  encountered  a 
more  than  usually  well  organized  and  obstinate  re- 
sistance from  a  coalition  of  Canaanite  princes,  who 
waylaid  him  in  the  passes  of  the  Southern  Lebanon. 
There  was  a  great  battle  near  the  city  of  Megiddo, 
situated  between  the  Jordan  and  the  sea,  and  the  vic- 
tory which  the  Pharaoh  won  on  this  occasion  laid  the 
land  open  before  him  to  the  Euphrates,  perhaps  even 


^  g  The  s  tor  y  of  a  ss  yria  . 

— but  that  is  by  no  means  certain — to  the  Tigris. 
Tribute  came  pouring  in  at  every  place  where  he 
halted,  and  among  those  who  sent  gifts  the  ''  chief- 
tain of  Assuru  "  (Asshur)  is  set  down  on  the  list  for 
fifty  pounds  and  nine  ounces  of  real  lapis-lazuli,  for 
imitation  lapis-luzuli  of  Babylon  (quantity  not  men- 
tioned, as  being  less  valuable),  and  *'  much  gear  of 
.  .  .  .  stone  of  Asshur."  In  the  catalogue  of  tribute 
collected  two  years  later,  the  ^'  chieftain  of  Assuru  " 
again  figures  as  having  sent  50  hewn  cedar  trees,  190 
other  trees,  several  hundred  chariots,  many  armlets, 
and  various  other  articles  that  have  not  been  clearlv 
made  out.  That  these  things  are  classed  under  the 
head  of  "  tribute,"  not  "  booty,"  proves  that  Assyria 
did  not  show  fight,  probably  not  feeling  equal  as  yet 
Battle  of  ^^  ^^^^  ^^  formidable  a  foe.  The  battle 
^^.^lioo^  of  Megiddo  took  place  about  the  year 
■^•^-  1584    B.C., — let    us    say    not    much    later 

than  1600, — and  Assyria  had  not  yet  reached  a 
very  noticeable  place  among  its  Western  neighbors. 
It  has  been  remarked  that,  if  the  Egyptian  inscrip- 
tion be  read  right,  the  fact  of  the  king  of  Assyria 
being  denied  this  title,  and  mentioned  only  as 
"  chieftain."  goes  as  far  as  his  submissive  attitude  to 
show  that  his  country  did  not  as  yet  rank  high  as  an 
independent  state.  Things  were  to  change  con- 
siderably within  the  next  three  hundred  years. 

16.  On  the  same  Egyptian  lists  of  booty  and  tribute 
gathered  in  the  great  Pharaoh's  Asiatic  campaigns 
we  find  the  name  of  another  nation,  occupying  a 
prominent  position,  which  strikingly  contrasts  with 
the    bare    mention   of   Assyria :    it    is   that    of   the 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


29 


KhetaS,  whom  we  know  from  the  Bible  as  HiTTITES 
— a  great  and  powerful  people,  spreading  over  an  im- 
mense territory,  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  lands 
we  have  thus  far  surveyed,  and  who  were  reach- 
ing the  height  of  their  glory  just  as  Assyria  began 
to  emerge  from  insignificance.  It  is  always  the 
Khetas  against  whom  the  Pharaohs'  expeditions  are 
principally  directed,  and  from  whom  they  encounter 
the  most  heroic  and  well-regulated  resistance  ;  and 
though  they  generally  defeat  them,  the  Khetas 
are  the  only  enemies  with  whom  they  occasionally 
treat  on  equal  terms,  and  whom  they  mention  with 
respect,  as  foes  worthy  of  themselves.  The  coali- 
tion which  nearly  had  stopped  Dhutmes  III.'s  prog- 
ress at  Megiddo  was  composed  of  Hittite  princes 
with  their  allies,  and  the  spoils  of  the  field  sufifi- 
ciently  testify  to  their  wealth  and  magnificence. 
Among  them  figure  a  royal  war-chariot  entirely  of 
gold  and  thirty-one  chariots  plated  with  gold,  stat- 
ues with  the  heads  of  gold,  thousands  of  pounds  of 
golden  and  silver  rings,  jewels  of  all  descriptions, 
large  tables  of  cedar-wood,  inlaid  with  gold  and 
precious  stones,  thrones  with  their  footstools  of 
cedar-wood  and  ivory,  etc.,  etc.  Their  tribute,  too, 
when  they  paid  it,  the  Khetas  mostly  sent  in  pre- 
cious metals  and  stones.  Silver  was  the  metal  they 
most  affected,  and  when,  after  an  intermittent  war- 
fare of  four  hundred  years,  a  lasting  peace  was  at 
last  concluded  between  them  and  the  Egyptian  Pha- 
raoh Ramses  II.  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty,  the 
treaty  was  engraved  on  a  large  plate  or  disk  of  silver. 
This   happened  in  the  first  part  of  the  fourteenth 


30  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

century  B.C.  (soon  after  the  interference  of  Assyria 
Battle  of  ^"  Babylonian  affairs ;  see  p.  20),  in  con- 
^^^i^380~  sequence  of  a  very  famous  battle  fought 
^•^-  near  the   Hittite  capital  Kadesh  on  the 

river  Orontes,  and  in  which  Ramses  II.  indeed 
gained  the  victory,  but  at  a  cost  and  after  a  long 
doubtful  struggle,  which  made  it  amount  almost 
to  a  defeat.  At  least  he  accepted  a  reconciliation 
as  eagerly  as  his  adversary  sought  it. 

17.  Like  the  Egyptians,  the  Hittites  belonged  to 
the  great  Hamitic  division  of  mankind — '' Heth,  son 
of  Canaan,"  Chapter  X.  of  Genesis  (v.  15)  calls  them, 
and  Heth  comes  immediately  after  Sidon,  the  "  first- 
born." This  at  once  locates  them, — since  both  Ca- 
naan and  Sidon  were,  as  we  have  seen,  geographical 
terms,* — and  places  them  just  where  history  finds 
them  :  in  very  early  possession  of  the  greater  part 
of  Canaan  (Syria),  in  compact  masses  or  scattered 
tribes.  But  they  were  only  the  southern  branch  of 
a  vigorous  Hamitic  stock  which  had  its  headquar- 
ters in  the  TAURUS  range,  its  continuation,  Mount 
Masios,  and  the  Arm_enian  Mountains.  At  what 
time  or  by  what  route  a  migrating  body  of  Hamites 
reached  this  wide  streak  of  mountain  land  is,  in- 
deed, beyond  the  power  of  even  conjecture  to  sur- 
mise;  but  it  is  quite  plain  that,  once  they  got  there, 
they  stayed  for  long  years.  For  locomotion  is  not 
as  easy  in  roadless  mountain  passes  and  narrow, 
shut-in  mountain  valleys  as  on  the  open  plain,  and 
once  fractions  of  races  get  wedged  into  such  nooks, 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  134. 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


31 


they  stay  until  forced,  by  increasing  numbers  or  by 
want,  to  send  forth  new  swarms  in  search  of  other 
quarters.  That  is  why  mountain  races  develop  very 
marked  individual  qualities,  which,  having  had  time 
to  become  rooted  habits  of  body  and  mind — a 
second  nature,  as  it  were — never  are  entirely  lost, 
even  under  the  influence  of  totally  different  condi- 
tions. Thus  it  is  that  the  Hittites,  long  after  their 
descent  into  the  hot  plains  of  Canaan,  still  preserved 
in  their  attire — the  use  of  boots,  of  the  close-belted 
tunic — certain  signs  betraying  a  Northern  origin. 
This  is  very  plainly  shown  on  the  Egyptian  wall- 
paintings  which  represent  the  battle  of  Kadesh  and 
reproduce  with  great  accuracy  the  distinctive  traits 
of  the  nations  that  took  part  in  it. 

18.  The  Hittites  had  another  and  still  more  im- 
portant capital  than  Kadesh — Karkhemish  on  the 
Euphrates,  a  city  as  strong,  from  a  military  point  of 
view,  as  it  was  powerful  and  wealthy,  being  situated 
at  the  junction  of  the  two  commercial  high  roads — 
that  from  Egypt  to  the  mountains  of  Armenia 
(south  to  north)  and  that  between  Babylon  and 
Nineveh,  on  one  side,  and  the  rich  trading  cities 
along  the  sea  on  the  other  (east  to  west).  This  city 
in  time  became  their  principal  capital,  the  great 
national  centre.  So  that  the  King  of  Karkhemish  is 
frequently  styled  by  the  Assyrians*  **  King  of  the 
Hittites"  in  a  general  way,  although  the  Hittites, 
like  all  ancient  nations,  were  split  into  a  great  many 
larger  or  smaller  principalities,  the  petty  rulers  of 
which  all  rejoiced  in  the  title  of  "  king."  It  would 
seem,  however,  that    in  the  course  of   time,  he  of 


32 


THE  SrORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


Karkhemish  came  to  exercise  a  certain  supremacy 
over  them  all,  could  summon  them  to  follow  him  to 
wars,  and  could  rely  on  their  services  as  one  entitled 
to  command  them.  Next  to  him  in  power  and  im- 
portance  was  undoubtedly  the  King  of  Kadesh. 
These  two  appear  to  have  controlled,  between  them, 
the  Hittite  cities  and  tribes  scattered  all  over  the 
northern  part  of  Syria,  but  were  separated  by  various 
alien  peoples,  with  names  familiar  from  the  Bible — 
Amorites,  Hivites,  Jebusites,  etc. — from  a  southern 
branch  of  their  nation,  the  Hittites  of  Hebron,  be- 
tween the  Dead  Sea  and  the  Mediterranean — the 
same  whom  we  found  selling  to  Abraham,  for  a  sum 
of  money  (in  silver  again  !),  the  piece  of  land  of  which 
he  made  his  family  burying-place.^  These  southern 
Hittites  reached  in  an  intermittent  chain  to  the 
boundaries  of  Egypt,  and  as  they  cannot  but  have 
had  connections  with  the  Shasus  of  Sinai,  it  is  verv 
probable  that  they  took  part  in  the  great  invasion. 
Indeed,  some  eminent  scholars  more  than  suppose 
that  one  of  the  unknown  Hyksos  dynasties  was 
Hittite.  This,  if  proved,  would  account  still  more 
fully  for  the  bitter  enmity  which  could  not  vent  it- 
self sufficiently  through  four  centuries  of  war. 

19.  On  the  whole,  the  Hittites  of  the  South  had  a 
more  difficult  position  than  those  of  the  North. 
Not  only  did  they  have  to  bear  the  first  brunt  of  an 
Egyptian  invasion,  but  they  were  scattered  and 
wedged  in  amidst  various  hostile  tribes,  and  in  the 
territory  of  the  most  powerful  and  compact  nation 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  347-348. 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


11 


of  this  region,  the  confederation  of  the  Pelishtim, 
so  well  known  to  us  as  PHILISTINES,  and  from  whose 
name  the  modern  one  of  the  whole  country — PALES- 
TINE— is  derived.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  weight 
of  the  national  greatness  and  power  should  gradually 
have  retired  from  them  and  centred  in  the  more 
solid  Northern  empire  with  its  more  numerous 
Hittite  population.  As  Assyria  increased  in  might 
and  became  more  aggressive  towards  its  Western 
neighbors,  the  glory  of  the  Hittites,  weakened  as 
they  were  by  the  long  wars  with  Egypt  and  harassed 
by  the  Amorites  and  other  peoples  of  Syria,  began 
to  wane.  At  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Kadesh  they 
were  perhaps  at  their  culminating  point.  The  de- 
cline after  that  was  neither  sudden  nor  even  marked, 
yet  the  records  of  Assyria's  warlike  career  show  it 
to  have  been  steady  and  sure  ;  and  seven  hundred 
years  after  the  battle,  the  empire  succumbed  under 
the  persistent  attacks  of  a  long  line  of  Assyrian  con- 
querors, the  confederation  dissolved,  and  the  King 
of  Karkhemish  made  place  for  an  Assyrian  governor. 
The  race  was,  however,  not  destroyed,  nor  even  its 
rule  extinct  :  the  greatness  that  departed  from  one 
branch  of  it  shifted  to  another.  Already  at  the 
time  of  their  greatest  prosperity — from  the  fifteenth 
century  B.C. — the  Hittites  had  begun  to  reach  out 
towards  the  west,  or,  rather,  north-west.  From 
the  cold,  rugged  mountain  region,  their  oldest 
known  home,  they  passed  into  the  vast  peninsular 
region  of  Western  Asia,  known  as  AsiA  MiNOR, 
pushing  onward  to  the  beautiful  littoral  of  that 
loveliest  portion  of  the  Mediterranean,     There  they 


34 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


founded  or  conquered  cities  and  states.  There  we 
shall  find  their  traces  again  when  those  countries,  in 
their  turn,  take  their  places  in  the  panorama  which 
the  history  of  the  East  slowly  unrolls  before  us ; 
but  there,  for  the  present,  we  must  leave  them. 

20.  At  all  events,  when  the  Hittite  empire  finally 
perished,  about  700  B.C.,  it  cannot  be  said  to  have 
met  with  an  untimely  end.  It  had  endured,  from 
first  to  last,  about  three  thousand  years,  a  term 
of  existence  nearly  double  that  fated  to  its  con- 
conquerors.  For  already  in  the  great  astrological 
work  associated  with  the  name  of  Sargon  of  Agade^ 
we  find  the  following  item  entered  in  a  list  of  astro- 
nomical observations  in  connection  with  events  on 
earth  :  *' On  the  i6th  day  (of  the  month  Ab)  there 
was  an  eclipse  ;  the  King  of  Accad  died  ;  the  God 
Nergal  {i.e.,  war)  devoured  in  the  land. — On  the  20th 
day  there  was  an  eclipse  ;  tJie  king  of  the  land 
Khatti  attacked  the  country  and  took  possession  of  the 
throne.''  As  '^  Khatti  "  is  the  name  invariably 
given  to  the  Hittites  in  the  Chaldean  and  Assyrian 
inscriptions,  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  this  is  a 
record  of  an  early  Hittite  invasion  in  Mesopotamia. 
From  which  it  follows  that  they  were  then  already 
settled  in  the  region  between  the  Orontes  and  Eu- 
phrates (in  other  words,  between  Mesopotamia  and 
Phoenicia),  i.e.,  virtually  in  the  same  regions  which 
they  occupied  later  on,  towards  the  end  of  the 
fourth  and  the  beginning  of  the  third  thousand 
B.C.,  with  the  difference  that  at  this  early  period  the 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  209. 


THE   RISE    OF  ASSHUR. 


35 


central  point  of  their  power  lay  probably  rather  in 
the  southern  part  of  their  territory  than  in  Karkhe- 
mish,  their  later  capital. 

21.  Still,  their  relations  to  the  ancient  Chaldaean 
states  cannot  always  have  been  hostile.  They  must, 
at  some  time,  have  been  closely  connected  with  those 
venerable  seats  of  civilization,  if  they  have  not,  in 
their  migrations,  actually  passed  through  the  great 
valley  between  the  rivers  and  sojourned  awhile  in  it. 
For  their  own  culture,  as  regards  both  religion  and 
art,  bears  the  unmistakable  stamp  of  a  Chaldaean 
origin.  Of  the  former,  indeed,  little  is  yet  known, 
save  that  they  gave  to  their  highest  god  the  name 
of  SUTEKH,  "  king  of  heaven  and  earth,"  and  that 
the  goddess  Ishtar,  as  worshipped  in  Karkhemish, 
bore  the  name  of  Atargatis  (Hittite  corruption  of 
her  Chaldaean  name),  and  was  ministered  to  in  her 
temple  by  a  large  band  of  girls  and  women,  her  con- 
secrated, or  "  sacred,"  priestesses.  As  to  their  art, 
sculptured  monuments  of  theirs  have  been  discovered 
which  clearly  prove  its  affinity  with  that  of  early 
Babylon  (see  No.  5),  although  for  their  writing 
they  made  use  of  signs  or  hieroglyphics  entirely  of 
their  own  invention,  and  unlike  either  the  cuneiform 
or  Egyptian  writing.  Little  has  been  done  as  yet 
for  the  deciphermentof  such  Hittite  inscriptions  as 
have  been  recovered.  But  when  we  consider  that 
as  late  as  ten  years  ago  no  one  yet  dreamed  of  the 
existence  of  a  great  Hittite  nation,  and  a  Hittite 
empire  reaching  from  the  frontiers  of  Egypt  to  the 
shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  we  shall  wonder  not  that 
so  little  should  be  accomplished,  but  rather  that  so 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


36 

much  new  knowledge  should  have  been  partly  se- 
cured and  partly  indicated.  It  is  to  Professor  A.  H. 
Sayce  of   Oxford,  to   his  wonderful    ingenuity,  his 


^iuullMii:iiiiiijmiujiiiu'iiiiu(iiMi:^UiULii''i^ 


5. — HITTITE    INSCRIPTION. 
(HommeL) 


untiring  industry,  and  passionate  pioneering  zeal  in 
opening  new  fields  of  investigation,  that  we  owe  a 
revelation  which  even  now  may  already  be  termed 
a  revolution,  so  startling   is  the  light  it  has  unex- 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR.  3- 

pcctedly  thrown  on  a  vast  tract  of  ancient  history 
hitherto  obscure  and  utterly  neglected. 

22.  From  their  position,  the  Khatti,  or  Hittites, 
were  the  natural  foes  of  Assyria — formidable  neigh- 
bors to  a  rising  power,  obnoxious  to  an  ambitious 
one.  Accordingly,  they  were  the  first  against  whom 
the  young  but  already  aggressive  nation  tested  its 
weapons.  Asshur-Uballit  (the  king  who  marched 
down  to  Babylon  to  avenge  the  ^murder  of  his 
grandson  about  1380  B.C.,  see  p.  21)  directed  short 
expeditions  to  the  west  and  north-west  of  Nineveh, 
against  mountain  tribes,  who  were  either  Hittite 
outposts  or  closely  adjoined  the  territory  of  the 
Hittites  proper.  His  successors  followed  the  same 
impulse,  only  they  pushed  further  into  the  mountains 
and  descended  lower  southward,  not  only  firmly  es- 
tablishing their  dominion  over  all  the  land  from 
the  Tigris  to  the  Euphrates, — which  latter  might 
be  considered  Assyria's  natural  western  boundary, — 
but  gradually  extending  their  invasions  far  beyond 
it,  into  the  plain-land  of  Syria.  As  booty  abounded 
and  population  increased,  new  cities  sprang  up 
around  the  two  older  capitals,  Asshur  and  Nineveh. 
Each  raid,  too,  brought  thousands  of  captives,  who 
had  to  be  disposed  of  in  some  way — and  w^hat  better 
employment  for  them  than  to  build  those  eieantic 
mounds  and  ponderous  palaces,  the  cost  of  which, 
as  valued  in  human  labor,  gives  such  bewildering 
figures?^  Thus  we  find  King  Shalma-  ^^,,^300 
NESER  I.,  shortly  before  1300  B.C.,  found-  ^'g^t/oai'^f 
ing  the  great  city  of  Kalah,  which  became  Kaiah; 

a  third   capital,   and  the  favorite  residence   of   sev- 


*  See  '*  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  48. 


^g  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA 

eral   of  the    most    powerful    later    monarchs.     This 
is    the    city   which    Layard    brought     to     light     at 
Nimrud,  the   deserted  and  dismantled  "  Larissa"  of 
Xenophon.     Separated  from  each  other  only  by  a 
few  miles,  and  moreover  united  by  the  course  of  the 
Tigris,  these  three  cities  almost  appear  like  separate 
quarters   of  one  vast  capital,  and  it  is   hardly  to  be 
wondered  at  that  the  first  explorers   much  inclined 
to  this  view.     This  date  of    1300   B.C.  is  a   notable 
one  in   Assyrian   history.     It   is  about  that  year — 
probably  a  few  years  later — that  the  first  conquest  of 
Babylon  by  an  Assyrian   king  is  recorded,  a  feat   of 
arms  associated  with  the  name  of  TUKULTI-NINEB, 
son  of  Shalmaneser  I.,  who   had  a  signet   ring  made 
bearing  his  name  and   title,  with  the  in- 
qi?s\°of'"      scription    "  Conqueror    of  Kar-Diniyashr 
Sabyion;      ^^.^  success,  howcvcr,  cannot  have  been  a 
permanent  one,  as  it  appears  that   he  lost   this  very 
signet    ring,    which    the    Babylonians,  with  pardon- 
able  vanity,    preciously     preserved     in    their  royal 
treasure,  possibly  in  memory  of  the  conqueror's  pre- 
cipitate and  disastrous  retreat,  flattering  to  their  na- 
tional pride.     Six  hundred   years  later  it  was  found 
and  carried  home  by  one  who   achieved   the   same 
conquest  far  more  thoroughly— King  SENNACHERIB, 
who  thought  the  recovery  of  this  ancient  trophy  of 
sufificient   importance   to  record  the  occurrence  and 
the  ring's  history  in  his  annals,  thus  enabling  us  to 
secure  one  more  am.ong  the  few  authentic  dates  of 
earlv  history  ;  a  date  the  more  interesting 
fh^Jews^^    to   us,   that   it    coincides    almost    exactly 
from  Egypt,  ^^.^^  that  of  the  exodus  of  the  Jews  out 
of  Egypt    under   the    leadership   of   Moses.     Thus 


THE  RISE  OF  ASSHUR. 


39 


the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  B.C.  shows 
us  Assyria  not  only  fast  approaching  the  period  of 
her  glory,  but  already  confronted,  in  various  stages 
of  their  development,  by  the  three  powers  which 
of  all  others  were  to  be  connected,  for  good  and 
for  evil,  with  her  future  destinies:  the  power  of 
Babylon,  that  of  the  Hittites  (then  already  on  the 
wane),  and  that  of  the  Jews — the  latter  as  yet  only  a 
speck  on  the  horizon,  undiscernible  to  the  eyes  of 
the  high  and  mighty  rulers  of  Asshur. 


n. 

THE    FIRST    OR   OLD    EMPIRE. — TIGLATH-PILESER   I. 

I.  In  the  south  and  south-east  portion  of  the  vast 
mountain  region  which  spreads  between  the  great 
chain  of  the  Caucasus  and  that  of  the  Taurus  with 
its  prolongations,  in  more  or  less  parallel  ridges  vary- 
ing ip  height  and  ruggedness,  there  are  two  of  the 
most  remarkable  lakes  in  the  world  :  Lake  Van  and 
Lake  Urumieh.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  situ- 
ated at  an  elevation  at  which  one  hardly  expects  to 
find  such  large  sheets  of  water,  the  former  over  5000 
and  the  latter  over  4000  feet  above  the  level  of  the 
Mediterranean  ;  and  Lake  Urumieh,  the  larger  of 
the  two,  is,  at  a  rough  estimate,  not  very  much  in- 
ferior in  size  to  Lake  Ontario.  Secondly,  they 
have  a  peculiarity  unusual  in  lakes :  their  water  is 
salt.  That  of  Lake  Urumieh  especially  is  far 
more  so  than  that  of  any  sea,  enough  to  materially 
increase  its  weight  and  buoyancy,  or,  to  use  the 
scientific  expression, ''specific  gravity."  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson  gives  the  following  account  of  it :  ''  The 
specific  gravity  of  the  water,  from  the  quantity  of 
salt  which  it  retains  in  solution,  is  great;  so  much 
so  indeed,  that  a  vessel  of  100  tons  burthen,  when 
loaded,  is  not  expected  to  have  more  draught  than 
three  or  four  feet  at  the  utmost.      The  heaviness 

40 


6. — DEAD    SEA    (where    IT    RECEIVES   THE    RIVER    ARNON). 

(Stade.) 


41 


42  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

of  the  water  also  prevents  the  lake  from  being 
much  affected  with  storms.  ...  A  gale  of  wind 
can  raise  the  waters  but  a  few  feet ;  and  as  soon  as 
the  storm  has  passed  they  subside  again  into  their 
deep,  heavy,  death-like  sleep."  Of  course  no  fish  or 
living  thing  of  any  sort  can  exist  in  such  brine. 
What  makes  these  peculiarities  doubly  striking  is 
that  they  are  the  very  same  for  which  the  great  lake 
of  Palestine,  the  so-called  Dead  Sea,  has  always  been 
famous  :  a  salt-water  bottom,  perhaps  the  lowest  in 
the  world,  since  it  lies  1300  feet  below  the  level  of  the 
Mediterranean.  These  two  lakes,  with  a  difference 
of  5500  feet  between  their  levels,  yet  identical  in 
nature,  are  equally  remnants  of  former  seas,  pools 
of  that  immense  ocean  of  which  the  Caspian  Sea 
is  but  a  more  gigantic  memorial,  and  which  once 
upon  a  time,  ages  before  man  had  appeared  on  the 
earth,  covered  the  greater  part  of  Asia,  Europe  and 
Africa,  with  only  the  very  highest  mountain 
ridges — such  as  the  Himalaya,  the  Caucasus,  the 
Atlas,  and,  partly,  the  Alps — rising  above  the  waters 
and  forming  solitary  and  widely  scattered  islands. 
The  time  will  come  when  all  these  salt  pools  will 
dry  up  and  leave  nothing  but  banks  of  salt,  like 
those  deposits  which  are  frequently  met  with  in  the 
sandy  steppes  of  Central  Asia  and  South-eastern 
Russia,  and  from  a  distance  startle  the  traveller, 
parched  with  heat  and  half  spent  with  thirst,  with 
the  appearance  of  snow-drifts. 

2.  Both  Lake  Urumieh  and  Lake  Van  were  well 
known  to  the  Assyrians,  and  the  peoples  who  lived 
around  them    again   and   again    were   subjected   to 


TIG  LA  TH  PILES ER  I.  43 

their  inroads  and  depredations.  Of  the  two,  Lake 
Van  was  perhaps  the  most  familiar  to  the  indefati- 
gable conquerors.  The  exceedingly  rough  and  se- 
verely cold  country  in  which  it  is  situated — part  of 
the  region  now  known  under  the-name  of  KURDISTAN 
— belonged  to  the  vast  mountain-land  somewhat 
vaguely  designated  by  the  Assyrians  as  Nairi,  or 
Lands  of  Nairi.  The  valleys  between  the  differ- 
ent mountain  spurs  were  inhabited  by  independent 
tribes,  each  calling  itself  a  nation,  while  their 
chieftains  are  all  awarded  the  title  of  ''king." 
Loosely,  if  at  all,  connected  with  each  other,  they 
were  an  easy  prey  to  the  compact  and  well-trained 
armies  which,  year  after  year,  pushed  further  into 
their  fastnesses,  and  before  which  they  generally 
fled  deeper  and  higher  into  the  mountains — "  like 
birds,"  in  the  expressive  phrase  of  the  historical 
inscriptions.  There  they  would  hide  until  the  in- 
vaders, who  had  too  much  to  do  in  many  places 
to  linger  long  in  one,  had  departed,  or  else,  pressed 
by  hunger  and  cold,  compelled  by  the  destruction 
of  their  homesteads  and  the  massacre  of  their  war- 
riors and  such  of  their  people  as  had  stayed  behind, 
they  would  come  down,  and,  to  put  an  end  to  the 
present  misery,  submit  and  pay  tribute. 

3.  At  one  of  the  sources  of  the  Tigris,  somewhat 
to  the  west  of  Lake  Van,  there  is  a  sculpture  on  a 
natural  rock,  smoothed  for  the  purpose,  represent- 
ing a  king  in  the  attitude  of  pointing  the  way,  with 
the  following  inscription  :  "  By  the  help  of  Asshur, 
Shamash,  Raman,  the  great  gods,  my  lords,  I,  Tu- 
KULTI-PALESHARRA,  King  of  Assyria,  son  of  .  .  / 


44 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


(here  follow  the  names  of  his  father  and  grand- 
father, with  their  titles) — ''  the  conqueror  from  the 
great  Sea  of  the  West  to  the  sea  of  the  land  of 
Nairi,  for  the  third  time  have  invaded  the  land  of 
Nairi."  This  monument,  the  oldest  memorial  of 
Assyria's  conquests  in  the  North,  is  also  the  earliest 
specimen  of  Assyrian  bas-relief  sculpture  yet  found, 
and  represents  the  first  really  great  king  of  that 
country,  at  least  the  first  whose  doings  are,  owing 
to  a  series  of  lucky  chances,  well  known  to  us. 
The  manner  of  its  discovery,  too,  is  of  unusual 
interest,  as  it  did  much  in  its  time  to  finally  silence 
the  doubts  which  were  for  a  long  while  entertained 
by  over-cautious  and  sceptical  scholars  concerning 
the  reliability  of  cuneiform  decipherment.  At  the 
reading  of  a  long  inscription  of  Ashurnazirpal,  a 
much  later  king,  whose  palace  Layard  laid  open  at 
Nimrud,  some  lines  were  made  out  to  mention  this 
very  sculpture,  with  an  exact  description  of  its  loca- 
tion. With  no  other  guide  than  this,  the  place  was 
explored  and  the  sculpture  found,  a  result  which  es- 
tablished beyond  a  doubt  the  claim  of  Assyriology 
to  be  real  science,  dealing  with  positive  facts  and 
systematic  researches,  and  not  merely  with  ingen- 
ious and  more  or  less  plausible  guesses,  as  had  by 
many  been  thought  probable.  However,  this  con- 
firmation ought  already  to  have  been  superfluous, 
for  the  discovery  happened  in  1862,  and  in  1857  an 
experiment  had  been  made  which  ought  itself  to 
have  been  sufficient. 

4.  At  the  exploration  of  a  vast  mound  at  Kileh- 
Sherghat  (ancient   Asshur)  the   excavators  had  ex- 


TIG  LA  TH  FILESER  /.  45 

tracted  from  the  four  corner-chambers  in  the  foun- 
dations *  four  cylinders,  in  the  form  of  octagonal 
prisms,t  about  eighteen  inches  in  height,  which 
bore  the  name  of  Tukulti-palesharra,  while  the  in- 
scription stamped  on  the  bricks  revealed  the  fact 
that  the  mound  had  once  been  a  temple  of  Raman, 
restored  by  the  same  king.  Two  of  the  cylinders 
were  in  excellent  preservation ;  of  the  two  others 
only  a  few  fragments  were  available  ;  but  the  loss 
was  not  great,  as  they  all  were  but  the  repetition 
of  the  same  inscription.  As  this  was  the  first  un- 
broken text  of  considerable  length — over  a  thou- 
sand lines — which  had  as  yet  been  recovered,  the 
arrival  of  the  cylinders  at  the  British  Museum 
created  much  excitement,  and  it  was  determined  to 
make  them  the  subject  of  an  experiment  which 
should  be  a  decisive  test  of  the  value  of  the  new 
science.  When  the  inscription  had  been  litho- 
graphed, copies  were  sent  to  the  four  scholars  who 
were  then  foremost  in  the  work  of  decipherment : 
Sir  Henry  Rawlinson,  Mr.  Fox  Talbot,  Dr.  Hincks, 
and  Mr.  J.  Oppert.  Each  was  to  contribute  a  trans- 
lation of  the  text  independently  of  the  others,  and 
at  the  end  of  a  month  the  work  was  completed  and 
the  manuscripts  were  sent  in  to  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society,  which  was  to  officiate  as  umpire.  When 
the  four  translations  were  printed  in  four  parallel 
columns,  no  layman  but  must  have  seen  at  a  glance 
that  they  were  the  rendering  of  the   same  text,  the 


*  See  ''  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  114. 
t  See  Ibid.,  illustration  No.  51. 


^6  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

discrepancies  between  them  being  only  in  details, 
and  such  as  were  to  be  expected  from  the  still  im- 
perfect knowledge  of  the  language.  The  transla- 
tion has  since  been  rehandled  and  improved  several 
times,  and  the  latest  and  most  perfect  version  is  in 
many  particulars  very  different  from  those  first 
attempts  ;  yet  these  were  too  convincing,  on  the 
whole,  not  to  have  been  considered  by  most  as  final 
proof  in  favor  of  cuneiform  research,  and  invet- 
erate doubters,  if  such  remained,  had  to  yield  to 
the  evidence  of  the  sculpture  and  inscription  so 
strangely  discovered  five  years  later. 

5.  The  inscription,  as  it  happened,  proved  of  the 
greatest  interest  in  itself,  apart  from  the  philolog- 
ical use  to  which  it  was  put.  It  gives  a  minute 
account  of  the  first  five  years  of  TiGLATH-PILESER  I. 
(for  this  is  the  common,  though  corrupt,  reading  of 
the  name),  and  brings  before  us  this  warrior  king 
with  the  vividness  of  a  full-length  portrait,  at  the 
same  time  that  it  gives  us  a  complete  picture  of  the 
greatness  Assyria  had  reached  in  his  reign,  which 
Tigiath  Pi-  covers  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century 
ib^out"""*"  ^•^* — 1120-1100.  Its  beginnings  were 
1100.  most  brilliant,  and  it  is  no  idle  boast  when 

he  declares,  with  more  truth  than  modesty,  in  the 
long  and  elaborate  preamble  of  which  the  open- 
ing paragraph  has  already  been  quoted  (see  pp. 
5  and  6)  :  '*  No  rival  had  I  in  battle.  To  the  land 
of  Assyria  I  added  land,  to  its  people  I  added 
people.  I  enlarged  my  territory,  all  their  countries 
I  subdued  "  (his  enemies).  That  he  was  not  the 
first    to    do   these  things,    and  that  Assyria's   con- 


TIGLA  TH  PILESER  T.  /^y 

quests  had   already  extended   far  beyond  the  orig- 
inal district   on   the  Tigris,  both   to  the   north   and 
west,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  most  of  the  expedi- 
tions which  occupied  the  first  five  years  of  his  reign 
were  directed  against  rebellious  provinces  and  un- 
submissive neighbors.     Of  these  latter  the  first  to 
feel  his  might  were    certain   Hittite    tribes    of   the 
mountains  between  the  sea  and  the  Upper  Euphra- 
tes, whom  he  attacked  in   their  own  country, — "  a 
land  difficult  of  access," — and  defeated   with   their 
five  kings   and  twenty  thousand  warriors.     "  With 
their  corpses,"  says  the  king,  ''  I  strewed  the  moun- 
tain   passes  and   the   heights.     I   took   away  their 
property,  a  countless  booty.     Six   thousand    warri- 
ors,  the  remnant  of  their  army,  who  had  fled  before 
my  arms,   embraced  my  feet.     I  carried  them  away 
and    counted   them  among   the    inhabitants  of  my 
own  land."     This  was  only  a  beginning.     From  one 
mountain  district  to  another  the  king  marched  labo- 
riously but   victoriously,   through   rugged,   pathless 
countries,  which  are  vividly  portrayed  in  a  few  scat- 
tered notices.     In  one  place  the  inscription  mentions 
that  a  wav  had  to  be  cleared  with  the  axe  throusfh 
dense  undergrowth  and  full-grown  trees  ;  in  another 
again  we  read  :  "  I  entered  high  and  steep  mountains, 
that  had  crests  like  the  edge  of  a  dagger,   imprac- 
ticable   for  my    chariots.     I   left   my  chariots,  and 
climbed  the  steep  mountains  ;  "  or  else  :   '*  Through 
mighty  mountains  I  made  my  way  in  my  chariot  as 
far  as  the  ground  was  even  enough,  and  where  it  was 
too  rugged,  on  my  feet." 

6.  The  king    prides  himself  on   having  **  passed 


4S 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


through  precipitous  defiles,  the  inside  of  which  no 
king  before  him  had  beheld,"  and  on  having  travelled 
high  and  far,  where  no  road  was  ever  made.  Indeed, 
he  seems  to  have  pushed  very  nearly  as  far  north 
into  the  Armenian  ranges  as  any  Assyrian  ever  did  ; 
many  of  his  successors  followed  his  footsteps,  but 


•;7'f'  -r '!;';VV''.'. 


•'■'111  P%'!^  "^Aj 


'       (\■•■,^  A''^r  I........     .!fe<f 


Cn'U;^ 


7. — PROCESSION    (probably    OF   GODS). 
(i-errot  and  Chipiez.) 

none  much  advanced  on  them  in  this  direction.  And 
as  he  attacked  successively  and  separately  the  vari- 
ous independent  kingdoms  located  among  the  high- 
lands around  the  Upper  Euphrates  and  Upper  Tigris, 
the  result  was  everywhere  the  same  :  monotonously 


TIGLA  TH  PILESER  I, 


49 


terrible  and  disastrous  to  the  mountaineers  ;  monot- 
onous too  in  the  reading,  as  the  same  horrible  details 
are  repeated  in  the  same  almost  stereotype  phrases 
of  cold,  matter-of-fact  narrative,  which  make  the 
picture  of  devastation  all  the  more  impressively 
ghastly.     Forests,  passes,  heights  filled  and  covered 


8. — CARRIED    INTO    CAPTIVITY. 
(Perrot  and  Chipiez.) 

with  the  bodies  of  their  defenders,  corpses  thrown 
into  the  Tigris  or  carried  into  it  by  its  affluents; 
cities  burned  and  destroyed,  palaces  robbed  and 
"  made  heaps  of  "  ;  the  families  of  kings  led  away 
captive  with  thousands  of  their  subjects,  or,  if  the 
kings  submitted  and  their  homage  were  graciously 
accepted,  carried  to  Assyria  as  hostages  ;  then  mi- 
4 


50 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


nute  enumerations  of  spoils  in  horses,  chariots,  cattle, 
plate,  and  bars  of  bronze,  etc.,  not  forgetting  ''  the 
gods  "  of  the  vanquished — these  few  lines  sum  up 
pages  of  Tiglath-Pileser's  triumphant  inscription. 
Of  the  first  half  of  it  almost  every  paragraph  re- 
counts the  conquest  of  some  one  country  or  king- 
dom, and  generally  concludes  with  one  of  the  fol- 
lowing statements  :  *'  I  carried  away  their  posses- 
sions, I  burned  all  their  cities  with  fire,  I  demanded 
from  them  hostages,  tribute  and  contributions  ;  " 
or,  "  I  laid  on  them  the  heavy  yoke  of  my  rule,  and 
commanded  them  to  bring  me  yearly  tribute  to  m)- 
city  of  Asshur  ;  "  or,  ''  I  conquered  the  land  in  all 
its  extent  and  added  it  to  the  territory  of  my  coun- 
try ; "  or,  lastly,  *' I  pardoned  them,  imposed  trib- 
ute on  them,  and  made  them  subject  to  Asshur, 
my  lord."  From  one  country  he  took  "  their  twenty- 
five  gods,"  and,  having  brought  them  to  "his  city 
of  Asshur,"  placed  them  in  its  principal  temples, — 
very  much  in  the  same  spirit  with  which  he  would 
have  incorporated  royal  prisoners  in  his  own  house- 
hold as  slaves. 

7.  One  expedition  must  have  been  fraught  with 
more  than  ordinary  difficulty  and  danger,  to  judge 
from  the  particulars  into  which  the  inscription  en- 
ters and  the  peculiar  solemnity  of  the  preamble, 
which  is,  on  a  smaller  scale,  almost  a  repetition  of 
the  great  opening  paragraphs.  Tiglath-Pileser  had 
to  deal  on  this  occasion  not  with  separate  tribes  or 
nations,  but  with  a  coalition  of  nearly  all  the  kings 
of  the  land  of  Nairi.  At  least  he  gives  a  list  of 
twenty-three,   to  whom  he   adds    sixty  more    in  a 


2; 
o 


Q 
O 

o 


Q 

w 


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w 
> 


D 
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K 
H 

><    hi 

S    O 

|v;     fa 


c-> 

ft- 

< 

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,-— ' 

-«-* 

Q 

G 

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H 

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L. 

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CN 


51 


t2  THE  STORY  OP  ASSYRIA. 

lump — eighty-three  in  all.  Even  though  the  mag- 
nitude of  this  figure  is  a  positive  proof  that  the  so- 
called  "  kings  "  were  in  reality  no  more  than  chief- 
tains of  mountain  tribes  (perhaps  something  like  the 
great  Highland  ''clans"  of  old  Scotland),  still  their 
union  must  have  made  them  formidable,  especially 
in  a  wild  region  of  wooded  mountain  fastnesses  and 
narrow  passes,  as  familiar  and  friendly  to  them  as 
they  were  unknown  and  dangerous  to  the  invaders. 
For  this  is  the  paragraph  in  which  particular  men- 
tion is  made  of  the  fact  that  no  king  before  Tiglath- 
Pileser  had  ever  before  entered  that  region.  The 
entire  relation  of  this  remarkable  campaign  is  so 
lively  and  entertaining,  so  full  of  characteristic  de- 
tails, that  it  may  stand  here,  almost  unabridged,  as 
a  specimen  of  the  early  monumental  literature  of 
Assyria  at  its  best. 

"  In  those  days,  .  .  .  Asshur,  the  Lord,  sent  me,  who  knows  no 
victor  in  war,  no  rival  in  battle,  whose  rule  is  righteous,  over  the 
four  quarters  of  the  world,  towards  distant  kingdoms  on  the  shores 
of  the  Upper  Sea,  which  knew  not  submission,  and  I  went  forth. 
Across  impracticable  heights  and  through  precipitous  defiles  the  in- 
side of  which  no  king  had  beheld  before,  I  passed.  Through  sixteen 
mighty  mountain  ridges  "—(the  names  are  given)—"  I  marched  in  my 
chariot  where  the  ground  was  good ;  where  it  was  inaccessible,  I 
cleared  a  way  with  axes,  and  bridges  for  the  passage  of  my  troops  I 
constructed  excellently  well.     I  crossed  the  Euphrates.     The  kings 

of "—(here  follows  the  list)—"  together  twenty-three  kings  of  the 

lands  of  Nairi,  assembled  their  chariots  and  troops  in  the  midst  of 
their  countries  and  came  forth  to  do  battle  against  me.  By  the  im- 
petuous onslaught  of  my  mighty  arms  I  conquered  them.  I  destroyed 
their  numerous  armies  like  Raman's  thundershower  ;  with  the  corpses 
of  their  warriors  I  strewed  the  mountain  heights  and  the  enclosures 
of  their  cities  as  with  straw.  Their  120  chariots  I  destroyed  in  the 
battle  ;  sixty  kings  of  the  lands  of  Nairi,  with  those  who  had  come  to 


r- 

O 
U 

(/; 

o 

iz; 

< 

O 


O    c 
I-] 

O 

w 
fi 

O 

W 
Q 


o 


53 


54 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


their  assistance,  I  pursued  to  the  Upper  Sea.  Their  great  cities  I  took, 
their  spoils,  their  possessions  I  carried  off,  their  towns  I  burned  with 
fire,  I  destroyed,  laid  them  waste,  made  heaps  of  them  and  land  for 
the  plough.  Numerous  herds  of  steeds,  colts,  calves,  and  implements 
without  number  I  carried  home.  The  kings  of  the  lands  of  Nairi 
my  hand  captured  alive,  all  of  them.  To  these  same  kings  I  granted 
favor.  Captive  and  bound,  I  released  them  before  Shamash,  my  lord, 
and  made  them  swear  the  oath  of  my  great  gods  for  all  coming  days, 
made  them  swear  allegiance  forever.  Their  children,  the  offspring 
of  their  royalty,  I  took  as  hostages.  I  imposed  on  them  a  tribute  of 
1 200  steeds  and  2000  bulls  and  dismissed  them  to  their  respective 
countries.  Si'ni,  king  of  Dayaini " — (one  of  the  twenty-three) — 
•'  who  did  not  submit  to  Asshur,  my  lord,  I  brought  captive  and  bound 
to  my  city  of  Asshur.  Favor  I  granted  him,  and  from  my  city  of 
Asshur  dismissed  him,  a  devoted  servant  of  the  great  gods,  to  live  and 
be  submissive.  The  vast  lands  of  Nairi  I  took  in  all  their  extent,  and 
all  their  kings  I  brought  low  to  my  feet." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  notice  the  remarkably  mild 
treatment  which  Tiglath-Pileser  awarded  to  the  King 
of  Nairi,  a  treatment  so  strongly  contrasting  with 
his  usual  summary  proceedings  as  plainly  to  indi- 
cate a  conciliatory  intention.  He  could  not  but 
admit  that  Assyria  could  not  afford  continual  repe- 
titions of  such  adventurous  campaigns  into  remote 
and  inaccessible  mountain  wilds  as  he  had  just  suc- 
cessfully carried  out,  and  was  wisely  content  with 
turning  unruly  and  perhaps  aggressive  neighbors 
into  vassals  and  tributary  allies,  without  attempting 
actually  to  annex  their  countries  or  letting  the  hand 
of  **  Asshur,  his  lord,"  weigh  too  heavily  on  them. 

8.  These  conquests  in  the  North  seem  to  have 
been  his  principal  occupation  and  most  important 
achievement.  An  expedition  to  the  South-east, 
into  the  outposts  of  the  Zagros  Mountains,  is  men- 
tioned indeed  as  successful  and  profitable,  but  with- 


II. — SCALING    A    FORTRESS,    AND   CARRYING    AWAY   CAPTIVES. 

(Lenormant.) 


5 6  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

out  much  emphasis.  Neither  does  the  inscription 
dwell  with  any  excessive  complacency  on  a  campaign 
in  the  West,  directed  against  the  '*  Aramaean  River- 
land,"  and  which  extended  the  rule  of  Assyria  to 
the  Euphrates,  where  the  river  bulges  out  in  an 
immense  bow,  furthest  towards  the  Mediterranean. 
Yet  this  very  paragraph  is  of  great  interest,  as 
being  the  first  official  mention  of  a  people  who  were 
destined  to  great  power.  For  only  a  few  hundred 
years  after  the  time  of  Tiglath-Pileser  I.,  the  Ara- 
maeans, a  purely  Semitic  race  who  had  probably 
also  halted  in  the  land  of  Shinar  and  migrated 
thence,  occupied  the  whole  of  modern  Syria,  form- 
ing a  single  kingdom,  of  which  Damascus,  originally 
a  Hittite  city,  became  the  capital.  This  is  one  of 
the  very  few  cities  in  the  world  which  never  en- 
tirely perished.  Essentially  a  Semitic  centre,  it 
retained  its  splendor  and  leading  position  all 
through  antiquity  ;  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the 
Arabs — Semites  also  —  went  abroad  conquering 
land  after  land  as  they  preached  the  religion  of 
their  prophet,  Mahomet,  Damascus  became  one  of 
their  chief  seats  of  power  and  learning,  little  inferior 
to  Baghdad  itself ;  and  even  when  the  barbarous 
Turks  had  swept  over  all  the  fair  countries  of  West- 
ern Asia  and  engulfed  them  in  their  upstart  empire, 
Damascus  still  held  its  own,  and  to  this  day  is  a  far 
from  unimportant  place.  This  sums  up  for  it  a 
continuous  existence  of  3500  years  at  least,  more, 
perhaps,  than  any  other  living  city  can  boast. 
Though  not  founded  by  the  Aramaeans,  to  this 
nation  it  was  indebted  for  its  greatness.     But  here, 


TIG  LA  Til  PILESER  L 


57 


about  II20  B.C. — from  the  passing  mention  of  the 
"  Aramaean  riverland  "  which  the  Assyrian  conqueror 
crosses,  to  make  a  sudden  and  rapid  razzia  into  the 
land  of  the  Khatti,  where  he  surprises  and  "  plunders 
Karkhemish  in  one  day  " — we  find  that  it  was  as  yet 
only  an  unimportant  tribe,  which  had  not  ventured 
beyond  the  sheltering  river.  Evidently  they  were 
the  successors  of  the  Hittites  in  the  land  we  call 
Syria,  gathering  strength  as  these  lost  it,  treading 
close  on  their  heels,  and  occupying  territory  and 
cities  as  fast  as  the  Hittites  evacuated  them  in 
their  retreating  movement  towards  their  mountain 
strongholds. 

9.  After  going  over  each  of  his  campaigns  more 
or  less  minutely,  Tiglath-Pileser  thus  sums  up  the 
result  of  them  in  a  concise  yet  comprehensive 
statement,  the  utterly  unadorned  simplicity  of  which 
lends  it  a  certain  impressive  grandeur: 

"  Forty-two  countries  altogether  and  their  princes,  from  beyond 
the  lower  Zab,  the  remote  forest  districts  at  the  boundaries,  to  the 
land  Khatti  beyond  the  Euphrates  and  unto  the  Upper  Sea  of  the 
setting  sun  " — (the  Mediterranean  above  the  mouth  of  the  Orontes) 
— "my  hand  has  conquered  from  the  beginning  of  my  reign  until  the 
fifth  year  of  my  rule.  I  made  them  speak  one  language,  received 
their  hostages,  and  imposed  tribute  on  them." 

10.  So  far  the  warrior  and  conqueror.  But  there 
is  another  side  to  his  character,  which  is  pictured 
with  equal  life-likeness  in  this  invaluable  record. 
He  shows  himself  to  us  as  a  prudent  sovereign,  who 
devotes  the  leisure  he  has  so  hardly  earned  to 
works  of  peace  and  to  the  increase  of  his  country's 
power  •  *'  I  made  chariots  and  yokes,  for  the  greater 


5  8  THE  S  TOR  Y  OF  A  SS  YRIA . 

might  of  my  country,  'more  than  there  were  before, 
and  provided  them  with  teams  of  horses.  To  the 
land  of  Asshur  I  added  land,  to  its  people  I  added 
people  ;  I  improved  the  condition  of  my  subjects, 
I  made  them  dwell  in  peaceful  homesteads."  He 
tells  us  that  he  "  fortified  ruinous  castles,"  filled  the 
royal  granaries  throughout  Assyria,  and  collected 
into  herds,  "like  flocks  of  sheep,"  the  wild  goats, 
deer,  antelopes,  which  he  had  caused  to  be  caught 
in  the  forests  of  the  mountainous  countries  through 
which  he  passed  ;  they  multiplied  and  furnished 
choice  victims  for  the  altars  of  the  great  gods. 
Nor  did  he  omit  to  care  for  the  adornment  of  his 
capital  and  of  his  country  generally.  Even  while 
on  the  march,  he  found  time  to  admire  the  beauti- 
ful forest  trees,  and  order  numbers  of  them  to  be 
carefully  taken  out  of  their  native  ground,  trans- 
ported to  Assyria,  and  there  planted  in  the  royal 
gardens  and  parks.  He  mentions  cedars  and  two 
other  kinds  of  trees,  of  which  the  names  have  been 
deciphered  but  not  identified,  and  says  of  them : 
"  .  ...  these  trees  which  in  the  times  of  the  kings, 
my  fathers  of  old,  no  one  had  planted,  I  took  and 
planted  them  in  the  gardens  of  my  country  ;  also 
precious  garden  grapes  which  I  had  not  yet  brought 
into  my  country,  I  got  and  enriched  with  them  the 
gardens  of  Assyria." 

II.  The  king  also  makes  us  witness  his  favorite 
pastime,  the  chase,  in  which  he  seems  to  have  in- 
dulged on  an  imposing  scale  during  his  various  ex- 
peditions. All  the  countries  he  visited,  as  well  as 
Assyria  itself,  swarmed  with  lions  and   other  wild 


TIG  LA  TH  PILESER  I. 


59 


beasts,  differing  according  to  the  different  regions  ; 
so  that  the  abundance  of  game  was  as  unlimited  as 
was  the  royal  huntsman's  ardor  to  pursue  it.  That 
the  distinction  gained  in  this  way  was  considered 
most  kingly  and  glorious,  is  evident  from  the  pride 
with  which  he  recounts  his  exploits  in  the  chase, 
tendering  due  thanks  always  to  ''  his  patrons," 
Nineb  and  Nergal,  the  two  tutelary  deities  of  war 
and  hunting,  especially  Nergal,  whose  sacred  emblem 
seems  to  have  been  the  human-headed  winged  lion. 
Of  four  wild  bulls  which  he  killed  in  the  desert,  on 
the  border  of  the  land  of  the  Khatti,  with  his  own 
bow  and  sharp-pointed  spear,  he  carried  the  hides 
and  horns  as  trophies  to  ''his  city  of  Asshur,"  as 
also  the  hides  and  tusks  of  ten  male  elephants 
killed  by  him  in  the  desert,  while  four  elephants  he 
took  alive  and  brought  to  his  capital.  ''  Under  the 
auspices  of  Nineb,  my  patron,"  he  goes  on  to  say, 
"  I  killed  1 20  lions  in  my  youthful  ardor,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  my  manly  might  on  my  own  feet,  and  800 
lions  I  killed  from  my  chariot.  All  kinds  of  beasts 
and  fowls  I  added  to  my  hunting  spoils." 

12.  So  great  was  this  king's  fondness  for  curios- 
ities in  natural  history  that  when  the  King  of  Egypt 
wished  to  cement  a  courteous  interchange  of  friend- 
liness by  some  acceptable  gift,  he  could  think  of 
nothing  more  acceptable  to  send  than  a  large  river 
animal — surely  a  crocodile  of  the  Nile — and  some 
'' beasts  of  the  great  sea."  This  curious  incident, 
however,  we  know,  not  from  Tiglath-Pileser's  own 
cylinder,  but  from  a  fragment  of  a  much  later  in- 
scription, in  which  another  famous  conqueror-king 


6o  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

goes     over    the    deeds'  of    his    great    predecessor. 
Though  extremely  concise,  this  account  reproduces 
the  essential  statements  of  the  lengthy  original,  and 
even  adds  a  few  particulars,  among  which  the  most 
interesting  is  a  mention  of  the  fact  that  Tiglath-Pile- 
ser  ''  mounted  ships  of  Arvad  and  killed  a  .  .  .  .  (per- 
haps a  dolphin?)  in  the  great  sea."     Now  Arvad 
(or  Aradus)  is  the  most  northern  of  the  Phoenician 
cities,  on  the  shore  of  that  part  of  the  Mediterranean 
which  the  Assyrians  called  ''  the  Upper  Sea  of  the 
setting  sun,"  and  it  would  seem  from  this  passage 
that  our  king  was  the  first   of  his  nation  to  go  out 
to    sea.       From  what  we  already  know  of  him  we 
can  well  fancy  that  he  took  no  little  pride  in  this 
pleasure-sail,    both  as  a  political  demonstration,    a 
sort  of  taking  possession  of  the  new  element, — con- 
sidered until  then  as  the  exclusive  domain  of  the 
sons    of  Canaan  along    the  shore, — and  also    as   an 
opportunity  to  indulge  his  passionate  love  of  sport 
by  a  novel  experience.     It  must  have  been  a  mem- 
orable    and    festive  occasion,  and  one  wishes     one 
might  have  a  glimpse  of  the  pageant,  graced  as  it 
doubtless  was  by  all  the  gorgeousness  of  Oriental 
costume  in  its  richest  display  and  by  the  blue  splen- 
dor of  those  wonderful  waters  and  skies. 

13.  We  thus  take  leave  of  Tiglath-Pileser  at  the 
height  of  his  power  and  glory,  with  a  feeling  of 
admiration  for  his  heroic  and  brilliant  personal 
qualities ;  and  it  is  not  without  regret  we  learn  that 
towards  the  end  of  his  reign  that  power  was  some- 
what shaken  and  that  glory  dimmed.  Like  all  the 
other  Assyrian  kings  of  whom  we  possess  records,  he 


TIGL  A  Til  PIL  ESER  I.  6 1 

had  wars  with  Babylonia,  and  this  was  ahvays  their 
unlucky  direction.  Even  during  the  period  of  As- 
syria's highest  fortunes,  when  she  was  invariably 
successful  against  the  nations  that  surrounded  her 
to  the  west,  north,  and  east,  she  often  was  roughly 
checked  in  the  South — very  naturally,  since  Baby- 
lonia, once  her  metropolis  and  teacher,  was  now  her 
equal  in  the  arts  of  peace  and  war,  her  equal — if  not 
her  superior  still — in  culture.  Yet,  ever  since  Tu- 
kulti-Nineb  I.  had  entered  Babylon  in  triumph  and 
written  himself  ''  conqueror  of  Kar-Dunyash,"  the 
younger  monarchy  seems  to  have  claimed  supremacy 
over  the  mother  country,  and  the  claim  to  have  been, 
at  most  times  and  in  a  general  way,  acknowledged, 
The  kings  of  Babylon,  too,  from  that  very  epoch, 
suddenly  appear  with  Semitic  names  instead  of  the 
Accadian  or  Cossaean  ones  that  had  succeeded  each 
other  in  a  long  line ;  and  this  alone  more  than  sug- 
gests a  change  of  dynasty  effected  by  the  Assyrian 
conquerors  with  a  view  to  their  own  interests.  Some 
kind  of  allegiance,  some  form  of  homage  must  have 
been  agreed  upon,  though  we  have  no  documents  to 
throw  light  on  the  subject,  for  we  often  hear  of 
''tribute  "  from  Babylon  ;  and  when  the  kings  of  As- 
syria march  down  into  the  country  it  is  generally 
to  repress  what  they  are  pleased  to  term  a  *' revolt." 
At  all  events,  the  kings  of  Babylon  never  ceased  to 
assert  their  independence,  alternately,  as  circum- 
stances  prompted,  changing  their  attitude  from  one 
of  self-defence  to  one  of  aggression,  with  intervals 
of  submission  and  outward  inactivity  when  fortune 
had   been  too  much  against  them.     The   relations 


52  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

of  the  two  Mesopotamian  monarchies  during  the 
six  hundred  years  which  elapsed  between  the  first 
conquest  and  the  final  struggle  for  life  may  be  de- 
scribed as  an  unending  game,  with  alternating  vicis- 
situdes, in  which  each  player,  when  winning  most 
sweepingly,  was  liable  to  sudden  defeat,  and  when 
losing  most  deeply,  was  ready  for  his  revenge. 
Tiglath-Pileser  I.,  like  his  ancestor,  Tukulti-Nin^b  I., 
had  to  take  his  turn  at  the  losing  game,  and,  like 
him,  left  a  trophy  of  his  defeat  in  his  adversary's 
hands — a  pledge  which  the  renowned  Sennacherib, 
when  he  finally  captured  Babylon,  400  years  later, 
redeemed  at  the  same  time  as  the  former  conquer- 
or's signet  ring.  In  this  case,  as  in  the  other,  it  is 
only  from  Sennacherib's  statement  that  we  learn 
anything  of  the  disaster  of  which  he  was  the  final 
avenger.  It  appears  that  Tiglath-Pileser,  who  in 
almost  every  sentence  of  his  great  record  betrays  an 
uncommonly  religious  turn  of  mind,  and  seems  to 
take  more  pride  in  the  building  and  restoration  of 
temples  than  even  in  his  warlike  deeds,  carried 
with  him  in  his  campaign  to  Babylonia  the  statues 
of  his  favorite  god  Raman  with  the  consort-goddess, 
Shala  ;  that  the  "  king  of  Accad  "  ^'  took  them  away 
and  dragged  them  to  Babel,"  whence  Sennacherib 
*' brought  them  forth  "   and  restored  them  to  their 

o 

own  temple. 

14.  This  completes  the  information,  so  unex- 
pectedly abundant,  which  we  have  concerning  Tig- 
lath-Pileser I.,  and  to  which  by  far  the  greatest  part 
he  has  himself  contributed  in  his  great  cylinder,  as 


TIG  LA  TH  PILESER  I. 


63 


he  distinctly  intended  to  do  when  he  had  four 
copies  of  it  deposited  under  the  four  corner-stones 
of  his  most  important  building — ''  for  later  days, 
for  the  day  of  the  future,  for  all  time !  "  he  exclaims 
in  the  closing  paragraph.  The  mighty  figure  of  the 
warrior  king  stands  forth  the  more  colossal  and  im- 
posing that  it  stands  alone,  like  a  solitary,  finely  fin- 
ished statue  in  a  vivid  ray  of  strong  light,  against 
a  dark  background.  For  all  is  darkness  around  him, 
scarce  relieved  by  a  few  vaguely  flitting  shadows. 
As  nothing  is  known  of  Assyria  under  his  predeces- 
sors, except  the  few  morsels  of  facts  about  Ashur- 
Uballit  and  Tukulti-Nineb,  so  for  two  hundred 
years  nothing  again  comes  to  light  of  his  successors. 
His  name  embodies  tor  us  an  entire  revelation. 
His  is  the  first  important  historical  and  literary 
record  that  the  Assyrian  ruins  have  yielded  us  ;  his 
the  first  monument  of  Assyrian  art  we  know  ;  after 
him — a  blank.  We  have  no  artistic  relics  what- 
ever, and,  as  to  history,  nothing  more  than,  after  an 
interval  of  nearly  two  centuries,  a  list  of  a  few  royal 
names,  with  not  a  scrap  of  reality  about  them. 
''  Nothing  is  known  at  present  of  the  history  of 
these  monarchs,"  says  Mr.  G.  Rawlinson  in  his 
"  Five  Monarchies."  ''  No  historical  inscriptions 
belonging  to  their  reign  have  been  recovered;  no 
exploits  are  recorded  of  them  in  the  inscriptions  of 
later  sovereigns.  They  stand  before  us,  mere 
shadows  of  mighty  names, — proofs  of  the  uncer- 
tainty of  posthumous  fame,  which  is  almost  as 
much  the  award  of  chance  as  the   deserved   recom- 


64 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


pense  of  superior  merit."  *  These  lines  are  cer- 
tainly forcible  and  impressive ;  but,  are  they 
equally  true?  Are  those  really  "  mighty  names" 
that  are  transmitted  to  us  without  a  faintest  record 
of  any  achievement  attached  to  them  ?  Deeds  of 
moment,  greatness  of  any  kind,  generally  survive  in 
some  way,  leave  some  trace  or  memory,  occur  indi- 
rectly in  later  records  if  contemporary  monuments 
are  wanting.  Assyrian  kings,  absorbed  as  they 
were  in  their  own  exploits  and  given  to  self-glorifi- 
cation as  they  show  themselves  throughout  their 
monumental  literature,  were  not  forgetful  of  their 
more  eminent  predecessors,  and  often  refer  to  them 
with  reverence  and  admiration,  or  at  least,  as  we 
have  already  repeatedly  seen,  mention  this  or  that 
fact  connected  with  their  reigns.  That  no  such 
posthumous  mention  occurs  of  any  of  those  who 
succeeded,  during  the  next  two  centuries,  to  the 
power  so  firmly  established  by  Tiglath-Pileser,  is 
perhaps  in  itself  rather  conclusive  proof  that  there 
was  little  to  record,  nothing  especially  noteworthy, 
either  as  event  or  personal  character,  to  stand  out 
prominently  in  the  memory  of  posterity  and  break 
the  monotonous  if  exciting  routine  of  petty  war- 
fare, hunting,  building,  and  despotic  home-rule 
which  made  up   the  average  career  of  an  Assyrian 

monarch. 

15.  At  all  events,  Tiglath-Pileser  I.  embodies  for 
us  the  first  period  of  Assyria's  rise  and  greatness, 
known  as  ''  the  First   or  Old  Empire,"  because  the 


*  "  Five  Monarchies,"  Vol.  II.  p.  336. 


TIGLA  TH  PILESER  /.  65 

line  of    sovereigns  who  founded   it  had  apparently 
been  as  yet   unbroken,  through   probably  as   much 
as   800    years.     This  remarkable  fact    is   indirectly 
pointed  out  by  Tiglath-Pileser   himself,   who,   after 
naming,  in  a  paragraph  of  his   great  inscription   de- 
voted to  his   royal   genealogy,  his   own   father  and 
his   ancestors  up    to    the    fourth    generation    back, 
mentions  his    remotest  ancestors,   Ishmidagan  and 
Shamash-Raman  (the  first  known   Patesis,  not  yet 
''  kings,"  of  Asshur),  the  latter  as  the  original  builder 
of  the  Temple  of  Anu  and  Raman  which  he  takes 
so  much  pride  in  having  reconstructed  with  greater 
splendor  than    before.      It  is   evidently    under   his 
rule,     and     mainly     by    his     efforts,    that    Assyria 
may  be   said   to    have   reached   her  normal    extent 
and    boundaries.       In    the    North,  the    conqueror's 
own     sculptured    effigy,    stern    and    commanding, 
seems  to  be  forever  silently  pointing  from  its  rock 
by    the    source    of    the    Tigris    to     the     mountain 
ridge    known    to     later    antiquity    as     MONS     Nl- 
PHATES  C'  Snowy   Mountains  ")   as   the  frontier  he 
gained  for  her.     To  the  west   the   Euphrates   seems 
her  most   natural   boundary,  while    to  the   east  the 
Zagros   chain  of  many  ridges    is    an    unmistakable 
barrier  ;  to  the  south   alone   the   boundary,  though 
well  marked  by  the   line  of   the   alluvium,   is  made 
fluctuating    by    the     uncertain     relations     between 
Assyria  and   Babylonia.     This   region  Mr.  G.    Raw- 
linson    defines    "  the    country   actually    taken    into 
Assyria,"  covered  by  undoubted  remains  of  Assyr- 
ian cities  and  towns,   as   distinguished  from   '*  that 
5 


65  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

which   was   merely   conquered   and   held   in  subjec- 
tion."    The  same  author  then  continues: 

"  If  Assyria  be  allowed  the  extent  which  is  here  assigned  to  her, 
she  will  be  a  country  not  only  very  much  larger  than  Chaldea  or  Baby- 
lonia, but  positively  of  considerable  dimensions.  Reaching  on  the 
north  to  the  38th  and  on  the  south  to  the  34th  parallel,  she  had  a 
length  diagonally  to  the  alluvium  of  350  miles,  and  a  breadth  be- 
tween the  Euphrates  and  Mount  Zagros  varying  from  above  300  to 
170  miles.  Her  area  was  probably  not  less  than  75,000  square 
miles,  which  is  beyond  that  of  the  German  provinces  of  Prussia  or 
Austria,  more  than  double  that  of  Portugal,  and  not  much  below 
that  of  Great  Britain.  She  would  thus,  from  her  mere  size,  be  cal- 
culated to  play  an  important  part  in  history ;  and  the  more  so,  as 
during  the  period  of  her  greatness  scarcely  any  nation  with  which 
she  came  in  contact  possessed  nearly  so  extensive    a  territory."* 


*G.  Rawlinson,  "  Five  Monarchies,"  Vol.  \.  p.  227. 


III. 


THE       SONS    OF     CANAAN  :      THEIR     MIGRATIONS. — 

THE    PHCENICIANS. 

I.  When  we  read  of  Tiglath-Pileser  I.'s  holiday 
sail  in  ships  of  Arvad,  and  of  his  killing  that  big  sea- 
fish,  there  is  something  in  the  whole  occurrence,  a 
certain  inappropriateness,  which  involuntarily  com- 
pels a  smile,  as  at  some  boyish  freak.  Maritime 
honors  sit  awkwardly  on  the  hero  of  a  hundred  land 
battles,  the  adventurous  invader  of  unknown,  im- 
passable mountain  regions,  and  Assyria  was  so  emi- 
nently a  continental  power  that  her  king  and  arm- 
ies appear  out  of  place  on  the  sea-shore  amidst  a 
people  of  traders  and  sailors.  At  all  events,  this 
was  but  a  passing  excursion,  a  military  visit,  and 
the  Phoenician  merchant -princes  who  on  this  oc- 
casion no  doubt  entertained  the  royal  intruder  and 
did  him  courteous  lip-homage, — not  unaccompanied, 
we  may  be  sure,  by  costly  gifts, — probably  consid- 
ered it  in  no  other  light,  nor  dreamed  that  the  hour 
was  not  so  far  distant  when  the  iron  rule  of  Asshur 
should  stretch  to  their  luxurious  homes  by  the  sea, 
their  docks  and  ship-yards,  their  warehouses  and 
factories,  and  lie  long  and  heavy  on  the  necks  of 
their  descendants.  The  Assyrians,  one  of  whose 
chief  characteristics  was  insatiable  greed,  were  not 

67 


5g  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

likely  to  forget  such  a  glimpse  of  boundless  wealth 
and  overflowing  prosperity  as  now  dazzled  their 
astonished,  coveting  eyes.  For  the  Phoenicians,  at 
this  very  time,  had  already  reached  the  towering 
point  of  their  career,  and  while  their  unbidden 
guests  were  wonderingly  enjoying  the  novelty  of  a 
sail  and  a  bit  of  sea-sport,  they  ranged  and  reigned 
as  masters  over  the  blue  element  as  far  as  human 
knowledge  went  and  ships  would  bear — both  knowl- 
edge and  ships  being  exclusively  their  own.  In- 
deed, the  date  which  has  been  ascertained  as  that 
of  Tiglath-Pileser — iioo  B.C.  and  thereabouts — is 
also  given  approximatively  as  that  of  the  founda- 
tion of  the  remotest  Phoenician  colony  and  one  of 
„       ,  ,.      their    most    important    stations — Gades 

Foundation  ^ 

of  Gades-     (now  Cadiz)  in  Spain,  on   the  other  side 

about  V  7  r         ' 

1100  B.C.  Qf  i\-^Q  Strait  of  Gibraltar.  To  arrive 
there  they  must  have  touched  and  gained  firm  foot- 
ing at  a  great  many  intermediate  points ;  and  it 
must  have  taken  them  many  centuries,  for  the  way 
is  lono-  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean,  and  all  ancient  authors  agree  that  their 
original  starting-point  was  a  group  of  small  islands 
in  that  gulf,— "  the  Great  Sea  of  the  Rising  Sun," 
as  Assyrian  geography  names  it.  Such  was  also 
their  own  account  of  themselves. 

2.  This  group  of  small  islands,  now  known  by  the 
name  of  BAHREIN  ISLANDS,  is  situated  about  the 
middle  of  the  western  shore  of  the  gulf,  close  to 
the  coast  of  Arabia,  a  tract,  as  nearly  everywhere 
along  the  sea,  fertile  and  habitable,  being  separated 
by  mountains  from  the  sands  and  parching  winds 


THE  SOXS  OF  CANAAN.  5q 

of  the  inland  deserts.  Here  seems  to  have  been 
the  first  known  home  of  the  Hamites  of  Canaan  be- 
fore they  separated  and  multiplied  into  the  numer- 
ous tribes  which  overspread  all  the  pleasant  and 
fruitful  portions  of  Syria  and  were  to  play  so  im- 
portant a  part  in  the  fortunes  of  the  Hebrews,  for 
which  reason  the  biblical  historian  gives  so  full  and 
particular  a  list  of  them.  (See  Genesis,  x.  15-19.) 
Here,  not  on  the  islands  alone,  but  also  on  the  lit- 
toral, they  must  have  dwelt  for  centuries.  One  of 
these  Hamitic  tribes  was  even  then  of  sufficient 
pre-eminence  to  have  received  a  separate  name, 
that  of  Punt  or  Puna,  (the  Phut  or  Put  of  Gene- 
sis, X.  6),  later  corrupted  under  Greek  influences 
into  Phcenicians,  and  to  have  been  personified  as 
one  of  Ham's  own  sons.  They  retained  their  sepa- 
rate identity  through  the  great  westward  migration, 
while  their  kindred  took  their  generic  name  from 
the  land  of  Canaan,  over  which  they  spread,  receiv- 
ing their  special  denominations  from  the  districts 
or  cities  they  inhabited.  The  Puna  were  essen- 
tially a  commercial  race,  and  preferably  chose  for 
their  settlements  such  regions  as  offered  fair  play 
to  this  peculiar  instinct  of  theirs.  An  important 
branch  of  them  gained  possession  of  the  finest  por- 
tion of  Arabia — the  present  YEMEN,  the  south-east- 
ern corner  of  the  peninsula  by  the  Strait  of  BaB-EL- 
Mandeb  and  the  opposite  protruding  corner  of  East- 
ern Africa,  now  known  as  the  SOMALI  coast — a  posi- 
tion which  evidently  commands  the  commerce  of 
the  Red  Sea,  the  Arabian  Sea,  and  even  the  more 
distant  Indian  Ocean,  and  was,  moreover,  as  it   still 


;o 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


is,  a  point  of  attraction  and  departure  for  caravans. 
Besides  which,  both  Yemen  and  Somali  are  them- 
selves exceedingly  rich  in  numbers  of  costly  Oriental 
products,  such  as  rare  woods,  frankincense,  spices, 
etc.  Here  the  Puna  lived  and  traded,  principally 
with  Egypt,  long  before  we  hear  of  the  Phoenicians. 
Some  think  that  tlie  latter  were  a  later  branch  of 
these  Puna,  which  separated  from  them  at  some 
time  and  wandered  northwards.  Others,  again,  are 
of  opinion  that  the  people  who  settled  on  the  Syr- 
ian sea-shore  were  Puna,  who  migrated,  by  a  more 
northern  road,  directly  across  the  desert  into  the 
Syrian  land  from  their  old  home  by  the  Persian 
Gulf,  wdience  their  Canaanite  brethren  had  departed 
before  them,  so  that  they  found  them  already  as 
builders  of  cities  and  founders  of  communities. 
Among  these  and  the  Semitic  tribes  who  continued 
nomadic  longer, — some  forever, — they  must  have 
tarried  by  the  w^ay,  until,  by  long  intercourse  and 
unhindered  intermarriages,  the  differences  wore 
away  and  they  were  numbered  among  the  ''  sons  of 
Canaan,"  and  their  first  capital,  SiDON,  came  to 
pride  herself  on  being  "the  first-born  of  Canaan." 

3.  There  are  no  events  of  greater  moment  in  the 
history  of  remote  antiquity  than  the  early  migra- 
tions of  races,  and  none  to  which,  from  their  very 
nature,  it  is  more  difficult  to  assign  even  an  approx- 
imative date.  Races  generally  migrate  \vhen  they 
are  at  a  stage  of  culture  that  does  not  as  yet  create 
many  monuments,  and  the  creation  of  monu- 
ments takes  time.  At  a  given  moment  a  people 
is    mentioned    in    the    inscriptions    of    some   more 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


71 


advanced  nation  as  living  in  certain  places,  and 
that  is  the  first  we  hear  of  it.  All  we  can  say 
is,  "  At  such  a  time  they  were  there,  for  here  is  the 
proof ;  "  How  long?  is  often  a  question  impossible 
to  answer.  Yet  in  some  favorable  cases  indirect 
indications  may  be  gathered  which  will  help  to 
place  the  event  correctly — within  a  couple  of  hun- 
dred years  or  so,  a  trifle  which  at  our  distance  from 
it  scarcely  comes  into  account  at  all.  Now  in 
Genesis  (chap.  xii.  5-6),  where  we  are  told  how 
Abram,  with  Sarai,  his  wife,  and  Lot,  his  brother's 
son,  and  all  their  substance  and  families,  departed 
from  Harran  towards  the  south  and  came  into  the 
land  of  Canaan,  we  read  this  little  annotation : 
"And  the  Canaanite  was  then  in  the  land."  The 
qualifying  word  "  tJien  "  seems  to  imply  that  they 
had  not  been  there  long.  Whether  they  had  so- 
journed, as  had  the  Hebrews,  in  the  land  of  Shumir 
itself,  or  confined  themselves  to  the  adjoining  fer- 
tile tracts  by  the  Gulf,  they  seem  to  have  preceded 
the  Hebrews  in  their  westward  migration.  Accord- 
ing to  one  tradition  they  had  been  driven  from 
their  seats  in  consequence  of  a  quarrel  with  the 
King  of  Babylon.  The  time  thus  indicated  corre- 
sponds more  than  approximatively  with  the  famous 
Elamite  conquest  of  Khudur-Nankhundi,  to  which 
we  are  continually  led  back,  and  there  is  nothing 
improbable  in  the  supposition  that  the  dispersion 
of  the  Canaanites,  like  the  migration  of  the  Hebrew 
and  Assyrian  Semites,  was  caused  by  the  shock  of 
that  invasion,  the  reaction  of  which  was  felt  in 
wider  and  wider  circles,  even  before  it   reached  the 


;2 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


Dead  Sea  itself  under  the  enterprising  Khudur  Lag. 
amar,"^  until,  as  we  saw  in  a  former  chapter  (see 
p.  24),  it  threw  the  Hyksos  hordes  into  Egypt. 
In  the  Hyksos  invasion  the  Canaanite,  especially 
the  Hittite,  element  was  strongly  represented,  as 
strongly  as  the  Semitic,  and  both  acted  so  much  in 
concert  as  to  be  almost  undistinguishable  from  each 
other,  owing  to  the  many  and  close  affinities  which 
have  always  subsisted  between  the  two  races  of 
Shem  and  Ham,  and  the  ease  with  which  they  al- 
ways amalgamated,  as  though  by  mutual  attraction. 
Thus  everything  concurs  to  show  the  Elamite  inva- 
sion to  have  been  one  of  the  most  momentous  as 
well  as  authentic  events  of  remote  antiquity,  and  a 
point  of  departure  for  revolutions  which  affected 
the  Oriental  world  far  beyond  the  countries  imme- 
diately concerned,  and  helped  shaping  it  into  those 
conditions  which  have  until  lately  been  considered 
as  the  very  earliest  that  history  could  deal  with. 
Nothing  could  be  established  with  much  certainty 
previous  to  1000  B.C.,  and,  fantastical  as  the  saying 
m^y  seem,  all  the  ground  we  have  gained  in  our 
backward  progress  has  been  conquered  by  the 
labors  of  the  pickaxe  and  shovel,  within  the  last 
thirty  or  forty  years. 

4.  We  have  seen  f  that  it  is  a  law  of  history  that 
no  country  is  found  desert  by  an  invading  or  mi- 
grating race  when  it  takes  possession  of  it ;  also 
that  no  race,  however  long  established  and  however 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  221. 
t  See  Ibid.  p.  126. 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN: 


73 


indigenous  it  may  deem  itself,  but  will  be  shown  to 
have  come  from  somewhere  else,  if  we  can  get 
back  far  enough  to  find  out.  Of  course,  behind 
everything  we  have  found  out  stands  the  next  thing 
which  we  have  not,  and  which  we  may,  or  may  not, 
find  out  in  the  future,  since  no  one  can  tell  before- 
hand wJiere  the  limit  of  knowledge  and  discovery 
lies,  though  it  is  certain  that  there  is  such  a  limit 
somewhere,  in  every  branch  and  direction  of  knowl- 
edge. As  we  pursue  the  destinies  of  migrating 
races,  we  often  come  upon  populations  which  we 
have  no  means  to  track  further  up  into  the  past, 
and  the  very  names  of  which,  given  them  by  the 
new  comers,  show  them  to  have  been  as  great  a 
puzzle  to  these  new  comers  as  they  are  to  us.  Thus 
we  are  told  that  "  Palestine,  when  entered  by  the 
Canaanites,  was  not  a  wilderness.  The  greater  part 
of  its  towns  were  already  built  and  the  country 
round  about  them  inhabited  by  a  numerous  popula- 
tion, who  were  either  extermined  or  forced  to  emi- 
grate by  the  Canaanites.  Some  remnants,  however, 
of  the  primitive  races  still  existed  when  the  Isra- 
elites conquered  the  land.  Some  of  the  names 
given  by  the  Bible  to  these  primitive  races  of 
Palestine  indicate  men  of  large  stature  and  great 
strength,  and  thus  popular  tradition  in  after  ages 
has  termed  them  giants."  *  Such  were  the  Anakim, 
the  Emim  (the  latter  name  meaning  "■  the  terrible," 
""  the  formidable  ") ;  such  also  the  people  whom  the 


*Fr.  Lenormant.     "Ancient  History  of  the  East,"  translation  of 
E.  Chevallier,  Vol.  II.,  p.  146. 


74 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


Canaanites  called  ZURIM  and  Zamzummim,  names 
simply  indicative  of  a  language  which  sounded  to 
the  foreigners  like  a  monotonous  gibberish,  an  unin- 
telligible buzzing.  The  last  remnants  of  these 
primitive  races  were  destroyed  by  the  Hebrews  ; 
but  even  then  they  were  numerous  enough,  and 
report  represented  them  as  sufficiently  terrible  to 
inspire  the  new  conquerors  with  even  greater  mis- 
givings than  the  Canaanitic  nations  they  came  to 
dislods^e.  When  Moses  sent  twelve  men  of  trust 
and  hicrh  standing:,  one  from  each  tribe  of  Israel  and 
'*  every  one  a  ruler  among  them,"  to  ''  spy  out  the 
land  of  Canaan  "  and  '*  see  the  land,  what  it  is,  and 
the  people  that  dwelleth  therein,"  ''whether  they  be 
strong  or  weak,  whether  they  be  few  or  many," 
they  came  back  disheartened,  and  declared  to  Moses 
and  the  assembled  tribes  :  "  We  be  not  able  to  go 
up  against  the  people,  for  they  are  stronger  than 
we.  .  .  .  There  we  saw  the  giants,  the  sons  of 
Anak,  which  come  of  the  giants  :  and  we  were  in 
our  own  sight  as  grasshoppers,  and  so  we  were  in 
their  sight  "  (Numbers,  xiii.).  And  of  the  land  of 
the  Moabites  by  the  Dead  Sea  (at  its  southern  end) 
it  is  further  said :  "  The  Emim  dwelt  therein  afore- 
time, a  people  great,  and  many,  and  tall,  as  the 
Anakim,  which  also  were  accounted  giants,  as  the 
Anakim  ;  but  the  Moabites  call  them  Emim."  And 
again  of  the  people  that  preceded  the  Ammonites,  a 
little  to  the  north  of  the  Moabites:  ''....  the 
Ammonites  called  them  Zamzummim  ;  a  people 
great,  and  many,  and  tall,  as  the  Anakim  ;  but  the 
Lord  destroyed  them  before    them,   and  they  (the 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN.  y^ 

Ammonites)  succeeded  them  and  dwelt  in  their 
stead"  (Deuteronomy,  ii.  lO-ii,  20-21).  In  fact, 
the  physical  power  of  these  last  descendants  from 
the  old  owners  of  the  soil  had  become  proverbial : 
*'  Who  can  stand  before  the  children  of  Anak !  " 
was  a  common  saying,  and  it  took  two  conquests, 
that  of  the  Canaanites  and  that  of  the  Hebrews, 
finally  to  exterminate  them.  The  account  of  the 
latter  concludes  with  the  express  statement,  "  There 
was  none  of  the  Anakim  left  in  the  land  of  the 
children  of  Israel,"  certain  districts  of  the  Philistines 
alone  excepted. 

5.  Now,  when  we  ask  the  question  that  naturally 
suggests  itself :  ''  Who  were  these  very  remarkable 
primitive  races?  Under  what  division  of  the  human 
family  should  they  be  classed  ?  "  we  have  no  means 
of  answering  it  by  anything  but  conjectures.  If  they 
have  attained  any  notable  degree  of  culture,  they 
have  left  no  monuments  of  it,  and  the  great  table  of 
the  tenth  chapter  of  Genesis  itself  furnishes  no  clew, 
leaving  us  completely  at  fault ;  for  while  it  minutely 
enumerates  the  members  of  the  Canaanitic  family,  it 
passes  over  in  silence  their  predecessors,  who  have 
been  aptly  called  ''  the  pre-Canaanite  races  of  Syria." 
This  silence  itself  is,  perhaps,  a  sort  of  indirect  clew, 
for  it  is  manifestly  intentional.  It  cannot  proceed 
from  ignorance  or  inadvertence,  since  they  are  so 
frequently  and  pointedly  mentioned  afterwards. 
They  are  voluntarily  and  consistently  ignored,  as  are 
the  entire  yellow  and  black  divisions  of  mankind. 
It  does  not,  therefore,  appear  improbable  that  they 
should  have  belonged  to  the  former,  especially  when 


76 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


we  remember  the  traditions  as  to  the  long  occupation 
of  all  Western  Asia  by  Turanians,  and  the  fact  that 
wherever  any  one  of  the  great  white  races,  which 
alone  the  biblical  historian  ranks  among  Noah's 
posterity,  arrives  in  the  course  of  its  migrations, 
it  seems  to  find  a  Turanian  population  in  long  estab- 
lished possession.^ 

6.  Of  all  the  ''  sons  of  Canaan  "  the  Phoenicians 
achieved  the  widest  renown  and  performed  the  most 
universally  important  historical  mission.  They  con- 
quered the  world — as  much  of  it  as  was  known — not 
by  force  of  arms,  but  by  enterprise  and  cleverness. 
And  they  knew  more  of  the  world  than  any  other 
people,  for  they  alone  possessed  a  navy  and  ventured 
out  to  sea, — into  the  open  sea,  out  of  sight  of  the  land. 
They  were  the  connecting  link  between  the  most 
distant  shores,  the  most  uncongenial  peoples,  the 
founders  of  that  amicable  intercourse  which  com- 
merce creates  and  fosters,  because  it  satisfies  mutual 
needs.  They  were  the  first  wholesale  manufacturers, 
and — greatest  boon  of  all  I — they  gave  the  alpha- 
bet to  the  world.  And  all  this  greatness,  power, 
wealth,  these  achievements  they  owed,  next  to  their 
distinctive  national  bent  of  mind,  to  the  peculiar 
disadvantages  under  which  they  labored  with  regard 
to  their  location.  Not  that  their  country  was  un- 
productive or  in  any  way  undesirable.  There  is, 
perhaps,  no  fairer  strip  of  land  than  that  between 
the  Mediterranean  and  the  Lebanon  chain.  But  it 
is  just  only  "  a  strip,"  so    narrow  that  the  gigantic 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  Chapter  II.,  *'  The  Great  Races." 


12. — ^A  PASS   IN   LEBANON. 


17 


78 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


mountains  that  overtop  it  with  the  eternal  crown  of 
snows  which  gave  them  their  name  ("Lebanon" 
means  "White  Mountains"),  have  no  room  to  de- 
scend to  the  shore  in  easy  steps  and  gracious  slopes, 
as  they  do  on  their  eastern  side  into  the  Syrian  plain, 
but  tower  rugged  and  precipitous,  with  rocky  ledges 
sometimes  jutting  and  beetling  on  the  very  edge  of 
the  water.  At  its  widest,  the  coast-land  has  only  a 
few  miles  to  expand  in,  so  that  even  the  streams  are 
not  really  rivers,  but  rather  rushing,  leaping  torrents. 
Never  had  nation  so  scant  space  to  grow  and  multi- 
ply in,  with  such  utter  impossibility  of  spreading  on 
any  side.  It  was  a  cup  which,  when  too  full,  could 
overflow,  literally,  only  into  the  sea.  The  harbors 
along  the  shore  were  many  and  good,  and  around 
them  the  Phoenician  fishing  settlements  grew  into 
populous,  active  cities,  forming  a  sort  of  ladder, 
with  the  promontory  of  MOUNT  Carmel  at  the 
bottom,  and  the  island  city  of  Arvad  at  the  top. 
To  this  day  the  lines  of  steamers,  as  they  ply  their 
service  along  the  Syrian  coast,  stop  for  passengers 
and  freight  at  all  the  great  maritime  stations  of  the 
Phoenicians  :  AcRE,  SuR,  Saida,  Beyrout,  Djebel 
are  the  ancient  Akko,  Tyre,  Sidon,  Berytus, 
Gebal,  each  of  them  once  an  independent  township 
or  principality,  with  its  own  territory  and  subject 
villages,  its  own  king  and  council  of  noble  and 
wealthy  elders ;  all  rivals,  jealous  and  envious  of 
each  other,  sometimes  hostile,  yet  bound  fast  to- 
gether by  the  ties  of  race,  language,  religion,  common 
customs,  institutions,  and  pursuits,  till  to  outsiders 
and  later  generations  all  distinctions  were  blurred, 


13. — SOURCE   OF   THE   RIVER   ADONIS    IN   THE   LEBANON. 


3o  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

all  differences  merged  in  the  one  collective  name  of 
"  Phoenicians."  Stinted  for  space  on  dry  land,  these 
communities  early  betook  themselves  to  the  water, 
became  the  best  mariners  and  shipwrights  in  the 
world,  built  almost  as  many  ships  as  houses,  and 
must  have  come  to  look  on  the  sea  as  their  real  home, 
since  even  their  very  dwellings  were  in  great  part 
constructed  more  on  water  than  on  land.  Arvad 
rose  on  a  rocky  islet  quite  some  distance  from  the 
coast ;  Tyre  was  built  on  a  group  of  small  islands 
artificially  connected  by  filling  the  shallow  straits 
between  them,  and  though  the  oldest  quarter  of  the 
city  continued  to  exist  on  dry  land,  it  was  degraded 
into  a  suburb  of  warehouses  and  landing-places  for 
freight,  while  the  palaces  and  temples,  the  arsenals 
and  docks  graced  the  later  island  quarter.  The  real 
uncorrupted  name  of  Tyre  is  Ts6r,  i.  e., ''  the  Rock." 
Sidon  occupied  a  small  peninsula,  connected  with 
the  coast  by  a  narrow  neck  or  causeway,  and  en^ 
dowed  with  the  unusual  luxury  of  three  harbors, 
facing  the  north  and  south. 

7.  It  was  during  the  four  or  five  centuries  of  the 
Hyksos  rule  in  Egypt  that  the  Phoenician  cities  rose 
to  their  full  development ;  indeed,  most  probably  in 
consequence  of  that  rule,  which,  being  in  the  hands 
of  kindred  races,  must  have  created  very  favorable 
conditions  for  their  commerce.  It  was  then,  too, 
that  Sidon  achieved  a  pre-eminence  among  them, 
which,  while  not  amounting  to  actual  sovereignty, 
yet  must  have  become  a  real  leadership  or  supre- 
macy, and  gained  for  her  the  proud  surname  of 
"first-born  of  Canaan,"   even    though,  in   point  of 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN.  3  j 

date,   some    other    cities    may  have   been   of    older 
foundation    still, — so    that    during    a    long    period 
foreign   nations   often   used  the   name  "  Sidonians " 
indiscriminately,    applying    it    to    the   whole    Phoe- 
nician   people.       For    this    distinction    Sidon    may 
very   likely  have  been   indebted    originally,   as  her 
name  suggests,    to   her   purple    fisheries,  the    most 
profitable    along  the   shore.     For   of  all  the  staple 
articles    of  the  Phoenicians'   export  trade,   the  one 
which    created    the   widest    demand    and     fetched 
the   highest   prices  was  their  purple  dye, — an  arti- 
cle,   too,    which    could    be    had    only   from    them. 
They  supplied  the  markets    also  with  many  other 
most  valuable  products  of  their  industry,  but  there 
was  none    so    distinctively  their   own.     They   were 
skilful  workers  in  metals,  and   produced    exquisite 
cups,  dishes,  ewers,  and  ornaments  of  all  sorts  in  gold, 
silver,  and  bronze  ;  their  glasswares  were  as  famous 
as  Bohemian  and  Venetian  glass  is  nowadays;  their 
looms  were  not  idle.     But  in  all  these  branches  they 
could   be   imitated   and  rivalled,  in  some  outdone. 
Thus  the  works  of  the  Egyptian  jewellers  are  mar- 
vels  of  art,  and  the   Egyptians  also   manufactured 
glass,  while   many  countries   and  cities   might   have 
disputed  the  prize  in  weaving  fine  stuffs  and  beauti- 
ful carpets.      But  the  purple   dye   the   Phoenicians 
had  discovered,  invented,  they  possessed,  and.  jeal- 
ously guarded  the  secret  of  it,  and  no  one  else  could 
make  it.     Through  all  the  gradations  of  color,  from 
delicate  crimson  to  the  richest  blood-red,  the  softest 
amethyst-purple,    the     deepest    black,    they    could 
manage  the  wonderful  substance,  till  the  costliest, 


32     '  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

most  perfect  piece  of  woollen  goods  increased  in 
value  tenfold  on  emerging  from  their  vats.  And 
robes  of  Sidonian  or  Tyrian  purple  became  an  al- 
most necessary  attribute  of  royalty  and  of  worship, 
the  adornment  of  temples,  the  distinctive  badge  of 
the  high-born  of  all  nations,  so  that  the  less  wealthy 
or  more  thrifty,  as  in  later  times  the  Romans,  if 
they  could  not  afford  or  condemned  the  expense 
of  the  lordly  luxury,  still  adorned  at  least  the  hem 
of  their  garments  with  a  more  or  less  wide  band  of 
purple,  according  to  the  wearer's  rank. 

8.  Never  before  or  after  did  tiny  shell-fish — for 
that  was  the  humble  scale  in  creation  occupied  by 
the  giver  of  the  precious  dyeing  substance — come 
to  such  high  honor  or  play  so  princely  a  part  in 
the  affairs  of  the  mighty  of  this  world,  unless  we 
except  the  pearl  oyster ;  yet  even  pearl  fisheries, 
though  they  have  enriched  companies  and  fed 
whole  populations,  have  not  been  the  making  of 
great  states,  while  it  may  be  said,  with  very  little 
exaggeration,  that  the  purple  mussel  ivas  the  mak- 
ing of  Phoenicia,  first  by  the  discovery  of  it,  then — 
and  still  more — by  its  disappearance.  The  dyeing 
substance  is  a  fluid,  secreted  by  the  mussel  in 
almost  microscopic  quantity,  each  animal  yielding 
just  one  small  drop.  Of  this  fluid,  the  raw  ma- 
terial, it  is  recorded  that  three  hundred  pounds 
were  needed  to  dye  fifty  pounds  of  wool.  Clearly, 
at  this  rate  the  home  fisheries,  however  abundant, 
had  to  be  exhausted  some  day,  and  when  the  mus- 
sel began  to  grow  scarce,  the  fishers  followed  it  up 
the  coast  in  their  boats,     It  was  soon   discovered 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


83 


that  the  entire  coast  of  Asia  Minor  swarmed  with 
the  precious  shell-fish  ;  then  ships  were  equipped 
and  sent  on  fishing  tours,  much  as  whalers  are  now. 
Thus,  from  station  to  station,  fishing,  trading,  ex- 
ploring, they  were  drawn  far  to  the  north,  as  far  as 
the  Hellespont.  But  this  was  not  all.  It  appears 
that  in  those  days  that  particular  kind  of  mussel 
absolutely  filled  the  waters  not  only  of  the  Asiatic 
coast,  but  of  all  the  islands  between  that  and 
Greece,  the  straits,  and  bays,  and  gulfs  of  Greece 
itself,  nay,  of  Sicily,  and,  further  still,  the  coast 
of  Northern  Africa  and  Southern  Spain  in  the  en- 
tire Mediterranean.  From  island,  then,  to  island 
the  Phoenicians  advanced,  always  in  pursuit  of  their 
invaluable  "  raw  material  "  ;  on,  onwards  to  the  west, 
till  the  shores  of  Africa  and  Spain  became  to  them 
as  familiar  as  their  own.  Thus  this  same  insig- 
nificant little  animal,  after  founding  the  wealth  and 
prosperity  of  the  nation,  lured  it  into  enterprise 
and  became  the  direct  cause  of  the  first  voyages  of 
discovery  that  were  ever  made  and  which  enlarged 
the  world,  as  then  known,  by  all  the  expanse  of  the 
Mediterranean,  with  all  the  countries  that  enclose 
it,  and  all  the  islands  scattered  over  it  ;  for  of  these, 
surely,  there  is  not  one  that  was  not  first  stepped 
upon  by  the  Phoenicians. 

9.  But  even  this  is  not  all  that  marvellous  mussel 
did  for  them.  It  founded  their  first  colonies.  For  it 
would  have  been  highly  unpractical  and  wasteful 
to  bring  home  shiploads  of  the  mussels  for  the 
sake  of  the  one  drop  of  fluid  to  be  obtained  from 
each.      It  was  much  simpler  to  extract  it  on  the 


g^  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

spot  and  leave  the  shells  to  rot  or  dry  upon   the 
shore,  as  the  pearl-fishers  do  with  the  oysters.     That 
such   really  became   the   general   practice    we  have 
evidence  in   the  mounds   of   shells  still  occasionally 
found   on   the   beach  of  this  or  that   island.     This 
obvious  calculation  gave   rise  to  the  establishment 
of   counting-houses    and  factories    at   the  principal 
landing    points ;    these  in   their    turn,   and   at   the 
more  important  stations,   gradually  expanded  into 
permanent  settlements.      Contact    with    the  native 
populations,  as  yet  very  rude  and   uncultured,  was 
inevitable  ;    native   labor    had  to   be   employed,  as 
being  both  cheap  and   handy.     The   islanders  were 
quickly  trained  to  fish  for  the  purple-mussel  them- 
selves and  to  trade  it  to  the  strangers  for  manufact- 
ured wares — pottery,   glass,  woollens — and  there  is 
no  doubt  that   the   foreign  merchants  drove  many 
hard  bargains  and   cheated  their  semi-barbarous  cus- 
tomers  quite  as  systematically  and   successfully   as 
the  modern   traders  who  grow  rich  on  the  gold  and 
ivory   of   African   tribes,   obtained   for   handfuls  of 
beads,  bottles  of  whiskey,  and  poor  cutlery.     Single 
Phoenician     ships    would     enter     some     harbor     or 
anchor  in  some  well-sheltered  cove,  and,  displaying 
an  attractive  array  of  goods  on  the  shore,  draw  out 
the  natives  and  organize  an  extempore  fair,  which 
seldom    lasted    more    than    five    or   six    days,    the 
seventh  day  being  generally  devoted  to  rest  by  the 
Phoenicians    as  well    as  by   the    Babylonians    and 
Assyrians.*     Not  unfrequently  the  ship-owner  and 


*  See  ''  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  256. 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


85 


crew  would  invite  the  islanders  to  a  grand  festive 
winding  up  of  business,  perhaps  promising  the 
women  presents  or  bargains,  and,  when  the  sails 
were  set  and  all  was  ready  for  their  departure, 
seize  upon  as  many  girls,  boys,  and  children  as  they 
could  without  too  great  risk,  and  carry  them  away, 
to  be  sold  for  slaves  in  their  own  country,  or  in 
Egypt,  or  Asia  Minor,  or  even  on  other  distant 
islands — again  very  much  after  the  manner  of  Eu- 
ropean dealers  on  the  coast  of  Africa  before  the 
abomination  of  slave-trade  was  abolished."^  How- 
ever, the  islanders  of  the  Greek  seas  were  not 
stolid  African  tribes,  but  the  ancestors  of  the 
Greeks,  the  most  gifted  race  in  all  the  ancient 
world.  So  they  learned  from  their  foreign  visitors  ; 
learned  not  only  what  these  taught  them,  but  far 
more,  so  that  in  time  they  could  treat  with  them 
on  equal  terms,  barter  their  fishing,  their  timber, 
their  ore  to  them  in  fair  exchange,  and  in  the 
course  of  a  few  hundred  years  supplant  the  Phoeni- 
cians' navy  by  their  own  and  become  their  rivals 
in  many  arts,  yet  never  in  the  production  of  the 
purple  dye,  although  the  Greeks  did  attempt  to 
imitate  even  that,  and  not  unsuccessfully.  But 
all  this  belongs  to  a  far  later  period  of  history  than 
that  we  have  as  yet  arrived  at,  and  which  is  that  of 
active  Phoenician  colonization. 

10.  The  prosperity  of  most  of  the  Greek  islands 


*  That  the  Phoenicians  never  quite  abandoned  the  practice  we  can 
gather  from  the  reproof  addressed  to  them  by  the  prophet  Joel : 
"  The  children  of  Judah  and  Jerusalem  have  ye  sold  unto  the  sons  of 
the  Grecians  "  (Joel,  iii.  6). 


S6  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

dates  from  the  establishment  on  them  of  Phcenician 
colonies.  Of  these  the  oldest,  falling  into  the  age 
of  Sidon's  supremacy  and  sent  out  principally  by 
that  city,  are  naturally  the  nearest  to  the  mother- 
country.  By  far  the  most  important  ones  were 
those  on  the  neighboring  island  of  Cyprus,  then 
on  that  of  Crete,  the  two  largest  and  most 
southern  of  the  Greek  islands.  Cyprus's  chief 
attraction  lay  in  her  copper  mines,  which  were 
so  abundant  that  the  island  itself  was  named 
after  the  metal,"^ — a  most  valuable  discovery  to 
skilful  workers  in  bronze,  since  about  nine  parts 
in  ten  of  bronze  are  copper.  Now  bronze,  in  those 
early  times,  was  the  staple  metal  out  of  which 
every  kind  of  implements,  tools,  and  household  arti- 
cles was  manufactured,  and  even  weapons — swords, 
daggers,  the  heads  of  arrows  and  lances — the 
use  of  iron  having  been  introduced  only  later,  at 
least  on  a  large  and  general  scale.  But  if  copper 
is  the  main  ingredient  of  bronze,  the  other  ingredi- 
ent, tin,  is  no  less  necessary,  though  only  in  the 
proportion  of  one  tenth  or  little  more.  Yet  it  is 
much  less  plentifully  supplied  by  nature  ;  there 
are,  in  the  world,  several  copper  mines  to  one  of 
tin  ;  these  are  few  and  far  between,  and  where  they 
do  occur  they  are  comparatively  scant  and  quickly 
exhausted.  It  is  this  difficulty  which  probably  first 
led  to  adopt  iron,  though  it  is  more  difficult  to  work, 
for  its  great  superiority  could  be  revealed  only 
by  the  use  and  labor  of  centuries.     But  in  the  time 

*  Hebrew,  Kopher  ;  Greek,  Kupros  :  German,  Knpfer;  our  Copper- 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


87 


of  the  earlier  Phoenicians  bronze  still  reigned  su- 
preme, and  they  had  to  provide  the  tin  both  for 
their  own  foundries  and  those  of  other  nations,  for 
instance,  the  Egyptians.  For  awhile  they  used 
to  get  it  in  the  mountain  regions  of  the  Taurus, 
north  of  their  own  country,  but  the  supply  was  in- 
sufficient, and  soon  ceased  entirely.  They  then 
went  for  it  to  the  Caucasus,  sending  their  ships  all 
the  way  round  Asia  Minor,  through  the  Hellespont 
and  the  Bosphorus  into  the  Black  Sea,  along  the 
southern  coast  of  which  they  scattered  several  set- 
tlements. And  in  their  westward  navigations,  ex- 
tended as  much  in  pursuit  of  the  precious  ore  as 
of  the  no  less  precious  shell-fish,  they  carefully  ex- 
plored every  point  at  which  they  touched  land. 

II.  It  was  thus  they  came  on  a  land  which  was  to 
be  for  many  centuries  one  of  their  richest  posses- 
sions— the  south  of  Spain,  which  they  called  Tar- 
SHISH,  and  which  is  often  given  in  the  later  and 
corrupted  form  of  Tartessus.  Here  the  rivers  car- 
ried gold  sand  ;  the  mountains  generously  opened 
their  silver-laden  sides  and  yielded  such  treasures 
of  pure  ore  as  many  centuries  of  assiduous  working 
scarcely  succeeded  in  exhausting;  and  not  silver 
alone,  but  also  copper,  lead,  and,  in  small  quan- 
tities, tin,  while  the  fertile  plains  known  to  this 
day,  under  the  name  of  Andalusia,  as  one  of  the 
gardens  of  the  earth,  literally  flowed  with  honey, 
oil,  and  w^ine,  and  were  a  very  granary  of  wheat 
and  other  grains,  besides  sheep  of  finest  fleece  and 
several  lesser  products.  The  most  extravagant 
tales,  as  of  fairyland,  were  circulated  of  this  blessed 


38  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

region,  and  many  have  been  wonderingly  and  half 
believlngly  transmitted  to  us  by  various  writers 
of  note.  Thus  one  tells  how  the  first  Phoenicians 
who  came  to  Tarshish  received  so  much  silver  in  ex- 
change for  worthless  articles  that  the  ships  could 
not  carry  the  weight  ;  so  all  the  implements  and 
utensils,  even  to  the  anchors,  were  left  on  the 
shore  and  new  ones  made  of  silver.  Another 
gravely  reports  that  once  on  a  time  the  forests  got 
on  fire,  when  the  gold  and  silver  bubbled  up  from 
below  the  earth,  melted  by  the  tremendous  confla- 
gration, for  that  every  hill  and  mountain  was  a 
solid  mass  of  gold  and  silver.  The  same  story  is 
told  of  the  Pyrenees,  where  numerous  rivulets  of 
pure  molten  silver  were  said  to  have  formed  and 
run  down  the  mountain  sides  on  a  similar  occasion. 
In  the  north-western  corner  of  the  Spanish  penin= 
sula  the  Phoenicians  found  tin  in  rather  larger 
quantities  than  in  the  South. 

12.  But  the  great  and  only  reliable  tin  mart  of 
the  world  in  the  bronze  ages  was  England,  espe- 
cially its  south-western  extremity,  now  known  as 
Devon  and  Cornwall,  and  the  islands  of  the  Chan- 
nel, the  first  recorded  name  of  which  is  a  Greek 
one,  signifying  "  TiN-ISLANDS  "  (Cassiterides). 
When  or  in  what  way  the  Phoenicians  ever  heard  of 
so  remote  a  nook,  so  totally  out  of  the  beat  and  be- 
yond the  horizon  of  all  the  nations  then  of  any 
note,  must  ever  remain  a  mystery.  But  certain  it 
is  that  already  long  before  the  foundation  of  Gades 
(about  iioo)  they  in  some  manner  regularly  drew 
thence  their  supply  of  tin   by   a   continental   route 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN.  89 

which  traversed  the  whole  of  France.  Probably 
they  did  not  at  first  go  over  to  the  islands,  but 
the  natives  brought  the  tin  to  them  where  their 
caravans  waited  to  receive  it,  somewhere  about 
the  mouth  of  the  Seine,  and  even  further  inland, 
if  not  as  far  as  the  Pyrenees  themselves.  A  glance 
at  the  map  will  show  how  easy  it  was,  by  sail- 
ing up  the  Seine  as  far  as  it  is  navigable,  then 
transferring  the  freight  by  a  short  land  journey  to 
the  Saone,  then  drifting  down  to  that  river's  junc- 
tion with  the  Rhone,  and  again  down  the  latter's 
deep  and  swift  current,  to  take  any  amount  of 
wares  to  any  of  the  numerous  harbors  on  the  Medi- 
terranean by  the  mouths  of  the  Rhone,  where 
would  be  stationed  some  of  the  so-called  "  Tarshish 
ships," — vessels  of  unusual  size  and  peculiar  build, 
adapted  for  long  navigations  and  heavy  freights. 

13.  Still,  this  route  must  have  been  hampered  by 
many  expenses  and  delays.  For  the  country  it 
traversed  was  occupied  by  a  great  many  tribes, 
each  of  whom,  of  course,  learned  to  make  an  easy 
profit  out  of  the  foreign  traders  by  levying  a  toll  on 
their  ships  or  wagons  as  the  condition  of  allowing 
them  free  and  safe  passage  through  their  own  re- 
spective territories.  The  Phoenicians  were  not  a 
fighting  people  and  always  submitted  to  exactions, 
even  extortions,  having  early  learned  the  power  of 
wealth  and  its  extraordinary  capacities  for  smooth- 
ing every  path  ;  besides,  their  profits  were  so  enor- 
mous that  they  could  well  afford  to  sacrifice  some 
portion  of  it  for  the  sake  of  being  allowed  to  pur- 
sue their  business  unmolested.     At  the  same  time, 


90 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


they  were  never  slow  to   find   and   take  ways   and 
means  to  elude  irksome   obligations.     So   it  was  in 
this  case ;  they  discovered  that  there  was  a  way  to 
the  '*  Tin   Islands"  round  by  sea,  the  route  we  now 
know  as  that  from   Gibraltar  by  the  Bay  of  Biscay 
and  the  Atlantic.     But  to  take  this  route  required 
more  than  ordinary  pluck,  not   to  say  recklessness  : 
not  so  much  on  account   of  any  deficiency   in   the 
ships  or  in  the  skill  of  the  mariners,  as  because  the 
Phoenicians  had   an   idea  that  the  straits  which  sep- 
arated Spain  from   Africa  marked   the  end   of  the 
world.     The  great  waste  of  waters   beyond   was  to 
them    the    mysterious   Western  Ocean,  into    which 
their  national  deity,  the  great  Baal-Melkarth,  the 
glorious  Sun-God,  plunged  every  night   at   the   end 
of  his  career,  and  whither  no  mortal  was  to  follow 
him.     He  had  protected  his  people  in  their  distant 
wanderings  ;  he  had  led  them,  in  the   wake   of  his 
own  westward  course,  to   these   gates  of   the  outer 
world,  but  here  was   the   end,  the   limit,   where   he 
said    ''No    further!"    The    two  gigantic,  towering 
rocks  which  mark  the  entrance  into  the  straits  from 
the  Mediterranean,  he  had  himself  set  up  as  signs 
and   boundaries  ;  they  were,  and    for  all  ages  were 
to   be,  "The  Pillars   of    Melkarth,"    beyond 
which  to  pass  to  further  explorations  would  be  lit- 
tle less  than  sacrilegious.     Gades,  indeed,  the  head- 
quarters  of  their  western   commerce,    wealthy  and 
splendid,  a  miniature  Tyre,  built,  like  the  metropo- 
lis, on  a  rocky  islet  at  some  distance  from  the  land, 
— Gades  rose  on  the  outer  side  of  the   sacred   land- 
marks, but  then  that  was  only  a  continuation  of  a 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


91 


coast  belonging  to  them  along  its  whole  extent  ;  and 
besides,  the  city  was  said  to  have  been    founded   by 
the  god's  own   order,   imparted   in   a  dream.     Had 
they  not  been   held  back   by  this  feeling  of  super- 
stitious  awe,  who  knows   what   further  discoveries 
they  might  have  made.    One  they  did  make,  but  it 
was  only  accidental,  and  nothing  came  of   it  except 
a  few  fables,  which  the  Greeks  later  took  hold  of, 
and,  touching  them  up  with  their  marvellous  fancy, 
worked  out  into  beautiful  stories.     It  appears  that 
some   Phoenician   ships  were   carried    out    into    the 
Atlantic   by    violent   winds,   and,  losing   control  of 
their   movements,    "  were  driven    by    the    tempest, 
after   many  days,    to    a   large    island    opposite    the 
shores  of  Lybia  (Africa),  blest  with    such    fertility 
and  such  delicious  air  as  to  appear  destined  for  the 
abode  of  gods   rather  than  the  dwelling  of  men." 
Evidently  the  island  of  Madeira !     But  the  Phoeni- 
cians did  not  return  thither,  and  left   the  group  to 
be  re-discovered  a  couple  of   thousand  years  later. 
The  love  of  gain,  however,  seems  to  have  overruled 
even  religious  scruples,  for  the  next  thing  we  hear 
of  are  the  regular  trips   of   Phoenician  ships   to  the 
'*  Tin  Islands,"  and  if  they  did   not  found   any  per- 
manent settlements  in  that  remote  and  uncongenial 
clime,   there    is    no  want   of  traces    to  attest  their 
presence.     Thus,  they  had  a  station  on  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  in  the  centre  of  the  island,   where  it  rises 
to  a  considerable  eminence,  commanding  the  rest. 
The  site   was   so    cleverly   chosen,    that    when    the 
Romans  came,  a  thousand  years  later,  they  built  a 
fort  on  the  same  spot,  and  that  again  was  succeeded 


92 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


in  due  time  by  a  strong  castle  of  Norman  construc- 
tion, the  noble  ruins  of  which  are  much  visited  and 
admired  under  the  name  of  Carisbrooke  Castle. 
The  knowledge  of  the  sea-route  to  the  ''  Tin 
Islands "  the  Phoenicians  kept  strictly  to  them- 
selves, and  were  jealously  watchful  that  no  one 
should  follow  and  supplant  them  there,  as  the 
Greeks  had  supplanted  them  nearer  home.  A 
characteristic  story  has  been  preserved  of  a  Phoeni- 
cian captain,  who,  finding  himself  pursued  by  some 
Roman  ships  which  had  accidentally  strayed  into 
those  unfamiliar  waters,  and  being  unable  to  escape 
by  stress  of  oars  and  sails,  deliberately  ran  himself 
aground  and  drowned  his  whole  crew  and  cargo,  so 
as  not  to  be  questioned  and  found  out — a  deed 
which  was  considered  at  Tyre  an  act  of  patriotic 
heroism.  All  this,  however,  relates  to  a  much  later 
period  than  that  we  have  to  deal  with  now. 

14.  Tin  was  not  the  only  commodity  the  advent- 
urous traders  brought  from  their  northern  voyages. 
They  were  the  only  importers  of  another  northern 
produce,  the  yellow  amber  of  the  Baltic— merely  a 
fancy  article,  it  is  true,  an  ornamental  luxury,  but 
not  the  less  in  great  and  general  demand,  and  fetch- 
ing extravagant  prices,  for  it  had  become  universally 
fashionable  in  the  then  civilized  world  on  account 
of  its  scarcity  and  the  mysterious  charm  which  dis- 
tance lent  it.  It  is  well  known  that  the  resinous 
substance  we  call  amber,  the  produce  of  inaccessible 
forests  of  submarine  plants,  washed  ashore  by  high 
tides  and  tempest-beaten  waves,  is  gathered  all  along 
the  coast  of  Prussia,     It    has  therefore    been  con- 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


93 


jectured  and  given  out  almost  as  a  certainty,  that 
the  Phoenician  ships  must  have  visited  those  se- 
cluded and  most  inhospitable  seas.  Later  and  more 
accurate  study,  however,  has  shown  the  improba- 
bility of  their  having  confronted  the  dangers  of  a 
navigation  round  Denmark,  and  ventured  into 
strange  and  nearly  always  stormy  waters,  so  bristling, 
moreover,  with  obstacles  in  the  shape  of  reefs  and 
cliffs,  shoals  and  shallows  and  straits,  as  to  make 
them  nearly  impracticable  to  any  but  native  sailors. 
It  has  further  been  shown  that,  in  very  ancient 
times,  amber  was  found  off  the  coasts  of  Holland* 
very  easily  accessible  from  England,  and,  lastly, 
that  the  Phoenicians  had  established  a  caravan  route 
across  the  whole  of  Germany,  from  the  Adriatic  to 
the  Baltic.  It  is  along  this  route,  which  offered 
them  many  convenient  points  for  bartering  their 
Asiatic  wares  against  local  products,  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  amber  was  brought  to  the  mouth 
of  the  river  Po  in  Northern  Italy  and  then  shipped 
down  the  Adriatic. 

15.  For  the  Phoenicians,  although  their  chief  re- 
nown is  based  on  their  maritime  expeditions,  were 
quite  as  intrepid  travellers  by  land  as  by  sea.  On 
the  Asiatic  continent  they  practised  caravan  trading 
on  an  immense  scale;  the  great  caravan  routes 
of  the  East  were  almost  entirely  in  their  hands  : 
from  the  Black  Sea  to  the  Nile,  over  Karkhemish 
and  Damascus ;  from  their  own  cities,  through 
the  land  of  Judah  to  the  southern  marts  of  Ara- 
bia ;  across  Syria,  through  Damascus,  to  the  Eu- 
phrates,  and  down   the  river  to   Babylon,  or  by  a 


94 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


short  cut  through  the  desert  to  Assyria  proper 
— Nineveh,  Kalah,  and  the  rest ;  lastly,  from 
Babylon,  across  the  continent,  even  to  India  it- 
self, at  least  to  the  mouth  of  the  Indus.  The 
latter  point,  however,  they  probably  reached  more 
frequently  in  large  armed  vessels  of  the  same  build 
as  the  Tarshish  ships.  They  were  the  privileged 
traders  of  the  world  ;  the  wealth  of  nations  passed 
and  repassed  through  their  hands  in  its  transfer 
from  country  to  country,  and  in  its  passage  enough 
stuck  to  these  hands  to  have  made  the  cities  by 
the  sea  rich  and  prosperous  beyond  all  others,  even 
without  the  ever  flowing  source  of  income  which 
their  own  factories  supplied,  and  which,  again,  would 
have  sufficed  for  a  nation's  prosperity  without  the 
addition  of  foreign  commerce  on  such  a  scale. 

i6.  As  it  was,  the  wealth  and  boundless  luxury 
which  the  Phoenicians  enjoyed  at  home  passes  all 
description  and  almost  imagination.  ''  Tyrus  did 
build  herself  a  stronghold,"  says  one  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets,^  ''  and  heaped  up  silver  as  the  dust  and 
fine  gold  as  the  mire  of  the  streets."  But  the 
most  complete  and  striking  picture  of  Tyre  in  her 
greatest  glory  Ave  find  in  some  of  the  prophet  Eze- 
kiel's  wonderful  pages.  This  picture  breathes  and 
lives  before  our  enraptured  eyes,  and  we  scarcely 
know  what  most  to  marvel  at, — the  poetic  beauty 
of  the  description,  or  its  almost  dazzling  vividness 
and  gorgeousness.  The  prophet  apostrophizes  the 
queen  of  the  Phoenician  cities: 

*  Zechaiiah,  ix.  3. 


THE  SONS  OF  CAA'AAAT. 


95 


*'  O  thou  that  dwellest  at  the  entry  of  the  sea,  which  art  the  mer- 
chant of  the  people  unto  many  isles  ....  thou,  U  Tyre,  hast  said,  '  I 
am  perfect  in  beauty.'  ...  By  thy  wisdom  and  by  thine  understand- 
ing thou  hast  gotten  thee  riches  and  hast  gotten  gold  and  silver  into 
thy  treasures.     By  thy  great  wisdom  and  by  thy  traffic  hast  thou  in- 
creased   thy  riches,    and    thine    heart   is  lifted   up   because    of   thy 
riches,  ....  and  thou  hast  said,  ^  I  am  a  god,  I  sit  in  the  seat  of  God, 
in  the  midst  of  the  seas.'  .  .  .  Thy  borders  are  in  the  heart  of  the 
seas,  thy  builders  have  perfected  th}'  beauty.     They  have  made  all  thy 
ship  boards  of  fir  trees  from   Senir ;  they   have   taken  cedars   from 
Lebanon  to  make  a  mast  for  thee.      Of  the  oaks  of  Bashan  they 
have  made  thine  oars  ;  they  have  made  thy  benches  of  ivory  inlaid 
in  boxwood  from  the  isles  of  Kittim   (Cyprus).      Fine   linen  with 
broidered  work  from  Egypt  was  thy  sail,  that  it  might  be  to  thee  for 
an    ensign  ;  blue  and  purple  from  the  isles  of  Elishah   (the  Greek 
islands)  was   thine    awning.     The  inhabitants  of  Sidon   and  Arvad 
were  thy  rowers ;  thy  wise  men,  O  Tyre,  were  in  thee,  they  were  thy 
pilots  ...  all  the  ships  of  the  sea  with  their  mariners  were  in  thee  to 
occupy  thy  merchandise.  .  .  .  Tarshish  was  thy  merchant  by  reason 
of  the  multitude  of  all  kind  of  riches  ;  with  silver,  iron,  tin,  and  lead 
they  traded  for  thy  wares.     Javan,  Tubal,  and  Meschech  (the  Ionian 
Greeks  and   the  mountain  peoples   of   the  Taurus),  they    were  thy 
traffickers  ;  they  traded  the  persons  of  men  and  vessels  of  brass  for 
thy  merchandise.     They  of  the  house  of  Togarmah  (Armenia)  traded 
for  thy  wares  with  horses  and  war-horses  and  mules.  .  .  .  Many  isles 
were  the  mart  of  thine  hand  :  they  brought  thee  in  exchange  horns  of 
ivory  and  ebony.     Syria  was  thy  merchant,  by  reason  of  the  multitude 
of  thy  handiworks  :  they  traded  for  thy  wares  with  emeralds,  purple 
and  broidered  work,  and  fine  linen,  and  coral  and  rubies.     Judah  and 
the   land   of   Israel,  they  were    thy  traffickers :  they  traded    for   thy 
merchandise  wheat .  .  .  .  and  honey  and  oil  and  balm.     Damascus  was 
thy  merchant  for  the  multitude  of  thy  handiworks,  by  reason  of   the 
multitude  of  all  kinds  of  riches  ;  with  the  wine  of  Helbon  and  white 
wool.  .  .   .  Arabia  "  (the   prophet  enumerates  a  number  of  Arabian 
tribes  from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  Red   Sea)  "...  they  traded  for 
thy  wares  in  lambs,  and  rams,  and  goats  ....  with   chief   of  all 
spices  and  with  all  precious  stones,  and  gold  ....  in  choice  wares  in 
wrappings  of  blue  and  broidered  work,  and  in  chests  of  rich  apparel, 
bound  with  cords,  and  made  of  cedar.   .  .  .   When  thy  wares  went 
forth  out  of  the  seas,  thou  filledst  many  people ;  thou  didst  enrich 


96 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


the  kings  of  the  earth  with  the  multitude  of  thy  riches  and  of  thy 
merchandise.  .  .  .  The  ships  of  Tarshish  were  thy  caravans  for  thy 
merchandise ;  and  thou  wast  replenished  and  made  very  glorious  in 
the  midst  of  the  seas."  * 

17.  ''  Thy  wisdom  and  thine  understanding." — 
"Thy  great  wisdom  and  thy  traffic." — The  wisdom 
of  the  money-maker,  the  understanding  of  the  cun. 
ning  trader— such  indeed  is  the  summing  up  and 
the  culmination  of  the  Phoenicians'  moral  worth. 
Money-making,  the  love  of  gain  and  accumulation, 
is  not  only  the  key  to  their  national  character,  it  is 
their  character  itself,  and  their  whole  character. 
Motive,  incentive,  sustaining  power — all  is  there; 
they  develop  great  qualities:  enterprise,  endurance, 
industry,  ingenuity — but  these  are  all  begotten  of 
and  animated  by  the  love  of  lucre,  and  success  to 
them  is  wealth,  and  therein  is  their  pride,  their  joy  : 
"Thine  heart  is  lifted  up  because  of  thy  riches." 
Truly,  if  ever  nation  has  been  a  worshipper  01  Mam^ 
mon,  has  made  its  choice  and  clung  to  it,  the  Phoe^ 
nicians  have  been  that  nation.  They  were  lacking 
in  all  the  qualities  which  have  won  for  other  races 
the  name  of  heroic  and  intellectual  ;  their  ambition 
ran  in  but  one  channel.  They  were  not  a  warlike 
or  conquering  people,  not  even  a  patriotic  or  free^ 
dom-loving  people.  Ever  ready  to  meet  an  invader 
with  tribute  and  submission,  they  invariably  pre^ 
ferred  to  pay  rather  than  fight.  They  were  not 
alive  to  the  shame  of  foreign  rule,  and  bore  it  with 
equanimity  so  long  as   its  demands  on  their  treasu- 

*  Ezekiel,  chs.  xxvii.  and  xxviii. 


The  sons  of  canaaiV. 


97 


ries  were  moderate  and  it  did  not  interfere  with  their 
commercial  operations.  They  had  no  army,  but 
foreign  hired  soldiers  for  emergencies;  in  the  words 
of  Ezekiel  (xxvii.  lo),  ''  They  of  Persia  and  Lud 
(Lydia)  and  of  Put  (Libya)  were  in  thine  army, 
thy  men  of  war  :  they  hanged  the  shield  and  helmet 
in  thee."  When  actually  attacked  within  their 
cities,  their  homes,  or  subjected  to  excessive  extor- 
tion, they  could  fight,  like  wild  beasts  at  bay  in  their 
dens,  and  this  they  did  more  than  once.  But  they 
were  seldom  put  to  such  a  test,  being  far  too  valu- 
able subjects,  too  convenient  agents  and  middle- 
men not  to  be  treated,  as  a  rule,  with  consideration. 
Thus  they  came  through  the  five  hundred  years  of 
Egyptian  dominion  and  invasions  unscathed  and 
unimpoverished,  rarely  refractory,  never  openly  re- 
bellious. Even  when  they  founded  colonies,  they 
were  quite  willing  to  pay  ground  rent  for  their  set- 
tlements, if  the  native  population  met  them  in  a 
determined  spirit  and  asserted  their  rights,  and  they 
frequently  continued  to  pay  such  rent  long  after 
the  colonies  had  grown  into  powerful  communities, 
simply  to  avoid  unpleasantness. 

i8.  They  were  not  a  literary  or  intellectual  people. 
Although  they  invented  the  alphabet,  they  used  it 
chiefly  for  purposes  of  book-keeping  and  short 
inscriptions.  They  have  left  no  poetry,  no  histor- 
ical annals,  no  works  of  science  or  speculation. 
They  do  not  seem  to  have  cared  even  to  publish 
their  own  very  remarkable  experiences  and  exploits  ; 
these  brought  them  wealth,  what  cared  they  for 
the   fame?     Had   Assyrian   conquerors  visited  such 


98 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


remote  and  unfamiliar  regions  as  the  coast  of  Spain, 
that  of  the  Baltic,  the  "Tin  Islands,"  what  interest- 
ing records  would  have  been  left  for  our  perusal ! 
How  the  monotony  of  the  military  narrative  would 

have  been  relieved  with 
touches  of  description, 
giving  briefly  but  graph- 
ically  the  most  marked 
peculiarities  of  the  land 
and  the  people,  accounts 
even  of  their  plants  and 
animals  I  Nothing  of  the 
kind  seems  to  have  oc- 
curred to  the  Phoenicians, 
whose  silence  is  especial- 
ly tantalizing  in  the  case 
of  the  "  Tin  Islands  "  : 
We  should  like  to  know 
what  England  was  like 
two  thousand  years  B.  C. 
They  were  not  an  imag- 
inative or  creative  people, 
but  merely  clever  learn- 
14.— SMALL  PHCENiciAN  IDOL  IN  ers  aud  imitators.     Of  the 

TERRA-COTTA    (CLAY).  ^^^^  .  ^.^g  ^^i^y  Cultivatcd, 

not  one  was  their  own.  Their  only  original  inven- 
tion was  the  purple  dye— and  that  is  a  craft,  not 
an  art.  Their  sculpture,  of  which  many  specimens 
have  been  preserved,  was  only  a  transformation  of 
Babylonian  and  Assyrian  art.  Nothing  can  be 
more  hideous  and  shapeless  than  the  images  of 
their  principal   deities,  mostly  in   clay,  which  they 


ctMrtf 


THE  SOm  OF  CAA'AAJ\r, 


99 


carried  with  them  on  all  their  expeditions.  Of 
their  architecture  we  cannot  judge,  for  when  the 
day  of  destruction  came,  it  was  utter  and  complete. 
and  not  stone  on  stone  was  left  of  their  buildings, 
It  came  to  pass,  as  we  read 
in  the  prophet  Ezekiel : 
"  They  shall  destroy  the 
walls  of  Tyre  and  break 
down  her  towers  .  .  .  and 
they  shall  break  down  thy 
walls  and  destroy  thy  pleas- 
ant houses;  and  they  shall 
lay  thy  stones  and  thy  tim- 
ber and  thy  dust  in  the 
midst  of  the  waters.  .  .  .  / 
zvill  make  her  a  bare  rock  : 
she  shall  be  a  place  for  the 
spreading  of  nets  in  the 
midst  of  the  sea''  * 

19.  Thus  through  the 
cycle  of  what  the  Phoeni- 
cians were  not,  we  are  for- 
cibly brought  back  to  what  15.— ashtoreth,  small  phce- 
they  eminently  zvere,  to  the 
vocation  wherein  they  dis- 
played unrivalled  genius  and  boundless  capabilities 
— that  of  business  men  and  money-makers.  And 
as  it  seems  to  be  a  wise  and  invariable  dispensation 
that  people,  in  laboring,  however  selfishly,  to  benefit 
themselves,  should  in  some  way,  and  independently 


NICIAN      IDOL     IN     TERRA- 
COTTA (clay). 


*  Ezekiel,  xxvi. 


1 00  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS Vr/A. 

of  their  own  will,  necessarily  benefit  others  also,  so 
the  Phoenicians  have  been  the  bearers,  if  not  of  spir- 
itual culture,  at  least  of  material  progress  to  count- 
less tribes  and  places,  which,  but  for  them,  but  for 
their  awakening  and  stirring  contact,  might  have 
slumbered  for  ages  longer  in  unconsciousness  of 
their  own  powers  and  resources. 

"  In  this  respect,"  says  Fran9ois  Lenormant,  the  scholar  so  often 
quoted  already,  "  it  is  impossible  ever  to  overrate  the  part  which  the 
Phoenicians  played  in  the  ancient  world  and  the  greatness  of  their 
influence.  .  .  .  There  was  a  time,  of  which  the  culminating  point 
may  be  placed  about  twelve  centuries  before  the  beginning  of  our  era, 
when  the  counting-houses  of  the  sons  of  Canaan  formed  an  uninter- 
rupted chain  along  all  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  to  the  Strait 
of  Gibraltar,  while  another  series  of  similar  establishments  were 
stationed  along  the  sea  route  that  stretched  from  the  southern 
extremity  of  the  Red  Sea  to  the  shores  of  India.  These  counting- 
houses  exercised  an  immense  influence  on  the  countries  wherein  they 
were  established.  Every  one  of  them  became  the  nucleus  of  great 
cities,  for  the  natives  qulickly  rallied  around  the  Phoenician  commer- 
cial settlement,  drawn  to  it  by  the  advantages  it  offered  them  and  the 
attractions  of  civilized  life.  Every  one,  too,  became  a  centre  for  the 
propagation  of  material  civilization.  A  barbarous  people  does  not 
enter  into  active  and  prolonged  commercial  relations  with  a  civilized 
one  without  gradually  appropriating  the  latter's  culture,  especially 
in  the  case  of  races  so  intelligent  and  capable  of  progress  as  were 
those  of  Europe.  .  ^  .  New  needs  make  themselves  felt :  the  native 
covets  the  manufactured  products  which  are  brought  to  him,  and 
which  reveal  to  him  all  sorts  of  refinements  of  which  he  had  no  idea. 
Soon  the  wish  arises  in  him  to  find  out  the  secret  of  their  fabrication, 
to  master  the  arts  which  create  them,  to  profit  himself  by  the  re- 
sources his  own  country  yields,  instead  of  giving  them  up  in  the 
shape  of  raw  material  to  the  strangers  who  know  so  well  how  to 
make  use  of  them.  ..."  * 

20.   If  we  will  try  to  imagine  how  revivmg,  bene- 
*  Fr. 'Lenormant,  "  Premieres  Civilisations,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  158. 


THE  SONS  OF  CANAAN. 


lOI 


ficial,  truly  civilizing,  even  in  our  own  days,  would 
be  the  regularly  recurring  trips  of  a  pedler  with  a 
judicious  selection  of  wares  to  a  remote  and  secluded 
neighborhood  somewhere  on  the  outskirts  of  civ- 
ilization, especially  if  that  pedler  be  willing  to 
barter  his  goods  not  always  for  money,  but  more 
often  for  such  simple  local  products  and  materials 
as  his  customers  can  supply,  we  shall,  by  magnify- 


iaii!ii*WiiMai«i 


*|||f|fili' 


1    KJVil 


I- 


iSiSfej^ 


Ml 

l6. — PHCENICIAN  SARCOPHAGUS    (COFFIN).        (oF   LATE    PERIOD.) 

ing  the  whole  thing  a  hundredfold,  form  a  tolerably 
fair  idea  of  the  blessings  that  everywhere  followed 
in  the  wake  of  the  Phoenicians.  The  resemblance 
would  be  the  closer  from  the  fact  that  our  pedler 
would  certainly  cheat  his  customers  as  hard  and  as 
long  as  they  would  let  him,  that  is,  as  long  as  they 
had  not  gained  some  knowledge  of  the  market 
value  of  their  own  wares,  and,  probably,  some  skill 
in  manufacturing  them,  so  as  to  become  compara- 
tively independent  of  their  itinerant  trader.  If 
they  were  wise  and  just,  however,  they  would   not 


102  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

grudge  him  his  past  exorbitant  profits,  even  while 
reducing  them  for  the  future  within  reasonable 
bounds,  but  would  consider  that  all  schooling  must 
be  paid  for.  Thus  as  each  one  of  the  great  nations 
that  have  in  succession  played  prominent  parts  on 
the  historical  stage  of  the  world  seems  to  have 
had  allotted  to  it  a  special  mission,  in  accordance 
with  its  own  particular  powers  and  gifts,  we  really 
might  define  that  of  the  Phoenicians  by  entitling 
them,  in  a  certain  sense,  without  disrespect  and 
without  undervaluing  their  immense  importance, 
the  Pedlers  of  the  Ancient  World.  It  was  in  its 
time  undoubtedly  a  most  necessary,  most  benefi- 
cent mission ;  yet  one  would  hesitate  to  call  it 
either  noble  or  glorious,  as  those  epithets  can  never 
apply  to  a  pursuit  so  entirely  selfish  and  grossly 
material  as  that  of  wealth  for  its  own  sake.  Such  a 
pursuit,  even  while  calling  into  play  many  splendid 
qualities,  debases  them  by  the  use  it  puts  them  to, 
and  the  only  sides  of  human  nature  which  it  de- 
velops fully  and  permanently  are  its  lowest  ones — 
unscrupulous  craftiness,  deceitfulness,  brutality,  and, 
on  occasion,  cold-blooded  cruelty. 


IV. 

THE   SONS   OF    CANAAN  :   THEIR    RELIGION. — SACRI- 
FICE AS  AN   INSTITUTION. — HUMAN  SACRIFICES. 

I.  It  is  but  fair  to  admit  that  the  Phoenicians  had 
by  no  means  a  monopoly  of  those  qualities  the 
combination  of  which  goes  far  towards  making  up  a 
rather  repulsive  national  character.  An  exceeding 
sensuality, — i.  e.,  attachment  to  all  the  material  pleas- 
ures and  advantages  of  life, — a  proneness  to  exclu- 
sively material  views  of  both  visible  and  invisible 
world,  with  a  strange  absence  of  loftier  instincts 
and  spiritual  aspirations,  resulting  in  gross  immoral- 
ity and  dulness  of  conscience, — such  were  the  com- 
mon features  generally  characteristic  not  only  of  the 
various  branches  of  Canaan,  but  of  the  entire 
Hamitic  race,  with  the  solitary  and  striking  excep- 
tion of  the  Egyptians,  than  whom  there  never  has 
been  a  more  spiritually  inclined,  contemplative 
nation.  All  the  numerous  people  gathered  into  one 
group  under  the  generic  name  "Sons  of  Canaan" 
shared  this  remarkably  well-defined  common  char- 
acter with  the  Phoenicians,  but  without  their  genius 
— for  to  genius  the  latter  certainly  can  lay  claim  in 
their  own  particular  line.  This  is  why,  with  a 
hankering  after  material  prosperity  as  absorbing,  a 
spiritual  callousness  as  impenetrable,  the  other  Ca- 

103 


I04 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


naanitic  nations  never,  even  distantly,  rivalled  their 
brethren  of  the  sea-shore, — favored,  too,  as  these 
were  in  the  peculiar  conditions  under  which  they 
developed,— in  either  power  or  wealth,  the  Hittite 
confederacy  alone  excepted,  and  that  only  during  a 
few  centuries.  This  same  character  of  materialism 
and  sensuality  pervades  the  Canaanitic  religion  as 
well,  and  stamps  it  with  the  unmistakable  mark  of 
the  race,  as  is  but  natural.  For  if  there  is  a  thing 
in  which  a  race  expresses  itself  most  fully,  and  in 
its  innermost  qualities,  that  thing  is  its  religion. 
What  a  people  is,  that,  in  a  heightened  and  inten- 
sified degree,  a  magnified  form,  its  gods  will  be,  its 
worship  will  embody.  This  is  an  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  anthropomorphic  tendency  which  is  a 
necessity  of  the  limited  human  nature,^  and  which 
an  ancient  Greek  writer  expressed  most  strikingly, 
if  somewhat  coarsely,  by  saying  that  if  horses  and 
oxen  had  gods,  they  would  certainly  imagine  them 
in  the  shape  of  more  perfect  and  powerful  horses 
and  oxen.  A  general  sketch  of  the  religious  con- 
ceptions of  the  Sons  of  Canaan  will  include  the 
Phoenicians,  although,  as  is  the  w^ont  of  all  polythe- 
istic races,  different  communities  did  particular 
homage  to  this  or  that  particular  deity,  and  some 
local  names,  some  local  forms  of  worship  produce  at 
times  the  illusion  of  separate  religions.  It  is  an 
illusion.  The  religion  of  Canaan — Phoenicia  and 
Syria — is  in  substance  one  and  the  same. 

2.  The  religion  of  Canaan,  like  that  of  Babylonia, 
like  that  of  every  race   and   nation  in   the  world,  is 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  355-357. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN.  joq 

originally  based  on  the  primitive  conception  of  the 
powers  of  nature  as  living  and  divinely  endowed 
immortal  beings — or  gods.  But  beyond  this  sim- 
ilarity, which  extends  to  all  mankind  universally,  it 
has  a  far  closer  connection,  manifested  in  many 
exact  coincidences,  both  of  general  features  and  of 
details,  with  the  Babylonian  religion, — a  connection 
which  will  easily  be  explained  on  the  ground  of  kin- 
dred, when  we  remember  that  the  Hamitic  race 
must  have  been  strongly  represented  in  the  mixed 
population  of  the  old  land  of  Shumir  and  Accad. 
In  one  way  the  religious  ideas  of  the  Canaanites 
may  be  said  to  have  been  an  advance  on  the  Baby- 
lonian ones,  since,  not  having  the  background  of 
Turanian  goblin-worship  to  work  into  their  own  sys- 
tem, and  being  moreover  of  a  far  less  contemplative 
turn  of  mind,  that  system  was  much  simpler,  and,  if 
still  polytheistic,  reduced  the  number  of  deities  to  a 
degree  at  least  approaching  monotheism.  We  find 
here  no  elaborate  superstructure  of  sacred  triads,  of 
puzzling  but  profound  import  ;  no  beautifully  or- 
dered system  of  planetary  divinities,  with  their 
many-colored  spheres  and  subtle  influences  on  the 
fate  of  men  and  states.  To  the  Canaanites  the 
world  was  a  far  less  complicated  affair.  These 
dwellers  in  a  land  where  barren  sandy  wastes  and 
bald,  rocky  highlands  alternate  w^ith  the  most  luxu- 
riant, fertile  plains  and  cool,  wooded  slopes,  the  un- 
reclaimable  aridity  of  the  desert  with  the  eternal 
freshness  of  the  sea,— where  dewy,  balmy  nights  fol- 
low on  burning,  breathless  days, — where  the  surpass- 
ing loveliness  of  a  showery,  flowery  spring  is  quickly 


I06  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

succeeded  by  the  merciless,  destructive  blaze  of  a  tor- 
rid mid-summer, — the  children  of  such  a  land  seem 
to  have  been  especially  impressed  with  the  contrasts 
in  nature,  or  what  has  been  called  the  Dualism  of 
things,  i.  c,  their  twofold  aspect,  the  opposite  ex- 
tremes which  face  and  balance  each  other.  They 
saw  that  there  was  good  and  evil  in  the  world,  (both 
to  them  of  a  purely  physical  nature.)  There  was 
heat  and  coolness ;  drought  and  moisture  ;  the  rude 
glare  of  day  and  the  mild  glory  of  night,  the  former 
set  apart  for  labor  and  hardship,  the  manly  toil  of 
mind  and  body,  the  latter  inviting  to  soft  indul- 
gence, effeminate  repose  in  the  midst  of  all  the  lux- 
uries and  pleasures  that  wealth  can  buy  and  leisure 
enjoy.  And,  in  another  order  of  ideas,  there  was 
the  eternally  creating  and  the  eternally  producing 
and  nourishing  power, — the  masculine  and  feminine 
principle  into  which  all  living  creation,  pervaded  by 
the  law  of  sex,  naturally  separates  itself,  the  division 
which  rules  and  harmonizes  the  universe."^  Of  this 
abstract  division,  the  material  one  of  heat  and 
moisture,  fire  and  water,  seemed  an  apt  embodi- 
ment and  rendering  ;  and  in  carrying  out  the  idea, 
the  fiery  element,  as  the  fiercer,  more  actively  ener- 
getic, was  naturally  identified  with  the  masculine 
principle,  while  that  of  moisture,  as  the  milder  and 
quieter,  answered  well  to  the  feminine  principle  ; 
the  necessary  union  of  the  two  to  form  a  complete 
world,  being  perfectly  symbolized  by  the  fact  that 
moisture  is  productive  of  life  only  when  subjected 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  242-245. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


107 


to  the  influence  of  heat,  while  heat  is  barren,  unless 
tempered  by  moisture. 

3.  In  the  material  world,  this  dualism  had  its  visi- 
ble representatives  in  the  two  great  rulers  of  the 
heavens,  the  Sun  and  Moon  :  the  Lord  of  Day  and 
the  Queen  of  Night  ;  the  source  of  all  heat  and 
the  dispenser  of  coolness  and  dew,  (as  the  moon 
was  long  supposed  to  be) ;  luminaries  both,  hence 
of  a  kindred  nature,  yet  how  different  in  their  ways 
and  attributions  !  It  was  the  sun,  then,  whom  the 
Canaanites  worshipped, 
calling  him  now  Baal 
( *'  Lord,"  the  same 
word  as  the  Babylonian 
Bel),  now  Moloch 
(king),  with  occasional  va- 
riations, such  as  "  Lord 
of    Heaven,"    or    "  King       17.— Phoenician  cylinder. 

of  the  City," — and  when  Baalim  are  spoken  of 
(*'  gods,"  in  the  plural),  it  is  only  the  sun-gods  of 
the  different  cities  or  communities  that  are  really 
meant, — the  same  one  sun-god,  localized  and  appro- 
priated by  the  addition  of  city  names.  As  to  the 
female  deity  of  the  Canaanites,  ASHTORETH  (whom 
the  Greeks  have  called  Astarte),  she  is  the 
ISHTAR  and  Mylitta  or  Belit  C  Baalath," 
''  Lady,")  of  the  Assyro-Babylonian  cycle  of  gods, 
scarcely  changed  either  in  name  or  nature ;  the 
goddess  both  of  love  and  of  war,  of  incessant  pro- 
duction and  laborious  motherhood,  and  of  volup- 
tuous, idle  enjo3'mcnt,  the  greatest  difference  being 
that  Ashtoreth    is    identified    with    the    moon  and 


1 08  ^-^^  -5  '^^OR  V  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

wears  the  sign  of  the  crescent,  while  the  Babylo- 
nian goddess  rules  the  planet  Venus,  the  Morning 
and  Evening  Star  of  the  poets.  We  have  a  Phoe- 
nician cylinder  of  cornelian,  representing  the  Baal 
in  the  shape  of  a  tree  or  post,  the  rays  which  sur- 
round it  characterizing  it  as  the  symbol  of  the  Sun- 
god,  and  accompanied  by  the  Crescent.  The  cyl- 
inder which  so  clearly  brings  before  us  the  joint 
worship  of  Sun  and  Moon,  the  male  and  female 
principle,  is  supposed,  from  the  place  where  it  was 
found  by  a  peasant,  to  represent  the  Baal  of 
Aphaka,  a  city  on  the  western  slope  of  Lebanon, 
east  of  Byblos  (Gebal),  which  had  an  ancient  and 
very  famous  temple. 

4.  As  was  but  meet,  the  two  principal  cities  of  the 
Phoenicians  had  respectively  placed  themselves 
under  the  patronage  of  their  two  great  national 
deities  :  Sidon  did  special  homage  to  Ashtoreth, 
while  Tyre  invoked  Moloch  under  the  local  name, 
already  mentioned  above  more  than  once,  of  Mel- 
KARTH  (''  King  of  the  City").  The  temple  of  the 
god  was  the  pride  of  the  New,  or  island-Tyre, 
and  stories  were  told  of  its  magnificence  which  al- 
most surpass  in  extravagance  those  current  about 
the  great  temple  of  BeL-Marduk  in  Babylon. 
Herodotus,  the  celebrated  Greek  traveller  and 
historian  of  the  fifth  century  B.  C,  tells  us  that 
he  made  a  voyage  to  Tyre  expressly  to  see  this 
temple,  of  which  he  had  heard  as  "very  highly 
venerated."  *'  I  visited  the  temple,"  he  continues 
with  perfect  good  faith,  ''and  found  it  richly 
adorned  with  a  number  of  offerings,  among  which 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


109 


were  two  pillars,  one  of  pure  gold,  the  other  of 
emerald,  shining  with  great  brilliancy  at  night." 
Pillars  of  gold  there  have  been ;  but  pillars  of 
emerald,  and  that  too  of  such  perfection  as  to  emit 
light  in  the  dark,  manifestly  belong  to  fable.  The 
pillar  was  probably  made  of  the  famous  Egyptian 
ereen  dass  which  mimicked  the  emerald, — a  stone, 
ancient  writers  inform  us,  the  easiest  of  all  to  im- 
itate. Even  in  this  shape,  the  ornament  must  have 
been  one  of  immense  value. 

5.  Neither  the  Phoenicians  nor  any  of  the  Canaan- 
itic  nations  were  literary  people  ;  they  were  not  even 
poetical  people ;  at  least  not  in  the  sense  of  writ- 
ing down  and  collecting  in  a  poetical  form  the 
legends  popularly  current  about  their  own  gods. 
Thus  they  have  left  us,  properly  speaking,  no  my- 
thology, and,  naturally,  no  Epos."^  Yet  the  poeti- 
cal or  imaginative  faculty  is  never  totally  absent  in 
any,  either  race  or  individual.  So  the  Canaanites, 
like  all  other  races,  of  course,  did  have  myths, — i.  e., 
presentations  of  natural  phenomena  in  the  form  of 
poetical  images,f — only  these  myths  did  not  crys- 
tallize into  stories ;  indeed,  they  were  not  generally 
expressed  in  words,  but  rather  in  ceremonies,  cus- 
toms, forms  of  worship,  attempts  at  artistic  repre- 
sentations. There  is,  therefore,  no  nation  at  whose 
myths  it  has  been  more  difficult  to  get.  They  have 
had  to  be  collected  from  the  stamps  of  coins,  frag- 
ments   of   monuments,   few   and    insignificant,   but 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  298-299. 
t  See  Ibid.,  p.  294. 


I  I  o  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS YRIA, 

principally  from  the  notices  scattered  through  the 
works  of  a  great  many  writers,  some  of  whom  spoke 
as  eye-witnesses,  and  others  only  as  reporters  and 
compilers  of  traditions  and  of  other  people's  evi- 
dence. Among  these  the  compilers  of  the  Bible- 
books  hold  an  eminent  position.  Also  some  of 
these  myths  the  Phoenicians,  in  their  wanderings, 
transmitted  to  the  Greeks,  and  these, — the  great 
story-tellers  of  the  world, — quickly  condensed  them 
into  shapes  of  almost  tangible  reality  ;  into  tales  of 
wonder  and  beauty,  transforming,  yet  scarcely  ob- 
scuring their  foreign  features.  Thus,  from  all  these 
manifold  and  incoherent  materials,  the  mythical 
conceptions  of  the  Canaanites  could  be  gradually 
reconstructed, — piecemeal,  so  to  speak,  but  with  a 
completeness  of  outline  which  makes  their  peculiar 
characteristics  stand  forth  very  vividly  and  unmis- 
takably. 

6.  Like  her  Babylonian  double,  the  Canaanite  god- 
dess was  especially  served  and  honored  by  women. 
Her  temples  were  crowded  with  beautiful  girls, — 
dancers  and  musicians, — and  her  altars  were  minis- 
tered to  by  priestesses,  frequently  recruited  from 
the  noblest  families.  But  the  temple-building  was 
of  secondary  importance  ;  it  was  the  temple-grounds, 
the  sacred  groves  which  surrounded  it  that  were 
the  principal  sanctuary:  the  goddess  of  nature  was 
best  worshipped  in  the  open  air,  under  bowers  of 
vegetation,  which  symbolized  her  eternal  youth 
and  productiveness  better  than  any  effort  of  art. 
Hence  the  finest  trees  were  sacred  to  her,  especially 
the    evergreens,    and  of   these    particularly  the  cy- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


Ill 


press,  which  we  have  already  learned  from  Baby- 
lonian religion  to  know  as  essentially  an  emblem  of 
everlasting  life.*  The  pomegranate  was  her  own 
especial  fruit,  because  of  the  thousands  of  seeds  its 
pulp  encloses,  making  it  a  striking  emblem  of  fer- 
tility. For  the  same  reason  fishes  were  sacred  to 
her ;  in  many  places  it  was  considered  sacrilege  to 
eat  or  kill  fish;  a  well-filled,  religiously-tended  fish- 
pond   usually    occupied  some  part   of  the   temple- 


l8. — COIN  FROM  CYPRUS, 
REPRESENTING  THE  TEM- 
PLE  AT    PAPHOS. 


19. — COIN  FROM  SIDON, 
REPRESENTING  A  PORT- 
ABLE TEMPLE  OR  SHRINE, 
PROBABLY  USED  IN  PRO- 
CESSIONS. 


grounds,  and  in  ASCALON,  where  the  goddess  was 
worshipped  under  the  name  of  Derketo  (see  p.  1 14), 
she  was  represented  under  the  form  of  a  woman 
ending,  from  the  hips,  in  the  body  of  a  fish.  There 
was,  besides,  near  that  city  a  lake,  very  abundant 
in  fish.  A  still  more  invariable  and  favorite  attribu- 
tion, however,  was  the  white  dove ;  it  was  looked 
upon  as  an  essentially  holy  bird,  which  it  was  sinful 
to  kill  for  food  or  sport.  On  the  few  representations 
of   her  temples  which  we  have  (mostly  on  coins  of 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  268. 


I  1 2  THE  S  TOR  V  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

Greek  islands,  whither  the  worship  of  the  goddess 
had  been  carried  by  the  Phoenicians),  we  see  doves 
fluttering  above  the  roof  and  around  the  stone  of 
tall  conical  shape,  which  strangely  and  rudely  per- 
sonifies the  divinity  herself.^ 

7.  But  the  principal  feature  of  the  worship  of  Ash- 
toreth  has  always  been  the  sacred  grove,  whether  of 
artificial  planting  or  of  nature's  own  providing,  in 
wooded  dells  or  oa  the  slopes  of  Lebanon, — as  altars 
to  Baal  were  erected  by  preference  not  so  much 
within  the  walls  of  temples  as  under  the  open  sky, 
on  the  top  of  hills,  or  any  convenient  eminence. 
Near  the  altar  was  usually  planted  a  '' sacred  tree," 
the  ASHERAH,f  either  a  real  tree  or  an  imitation  of 
conventional  shape.  In  this  manner  the  Baal  was 
not  served  unaccompanied  by  the  Baalath,  and  the 
worshipper  was  forcibly  reminded  of  the  dual  nature 
of  the  One  First  Principle,  or — to  reverse  the  defini- 
tion— of  the  real  unity  of  the  divine  couple.  We  see 
this  symbol — the  altar  of  the  god  and  the  tree  of 
the  goddess — on  many  Assyrian  sculptures  repre- 
senting scenes  of  worship.  These  are  the  "  high 
places  "  and  the  ''  asherahs,"  so  frequently  and  wrath- 
fully  denounced  in  the  Bible,  the  heathen  abomi- 
nations  into  which    Judah    and    Israel    continually 


*  This  is  the  very  oldest  Canaanitic  and  -Semitic  idol-form,  some- 
times, as  on  the  illustration l^o.  18,  furnished  with  rude  appendages, 
simulating  a  head  and  arms ;  but  this  is  a  later  innovation.  See  also 
No.  17. 

t  Another  form  of  the  Sacred  Tree,  the  holy  Life-Symbol,  familiar 
to  us  from  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  sculpture,  and  the  signification 
of  which  has  been  fully  explained  in  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  268,  ff. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


113 


lapsed,  and  for  which  the  prophets  as  incessantly 
reproved  them,  till  there  would,  from  time  to  time, 
arise  a   pious   or  repentant   king  who  would  sweep 


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20. — ASSYRIAN    PORTABLE   ALTAR    WITH    ASHERAH.       (INTERIOR 
OF   A   CAMP   OR    FORTRESS.) 

them  from  the  land — to  be  restored  by  his  succes- 
sors, generally  by  his  own  son.  Thus  it  is  said  of 
Josiah,  king  of  Judah,  a  great  religious  reformer 
(2  Kings,  xxiii.),  that  he  burned  all  the  vessels 
that  had  been  made  for  the  service  of  Baal,  "and 
3 


I  I  A  THE  STOR  Y  OF  ASS YRIA, 

for  the  asherah,  and  for  all  the  host  of  heaven," — 
*'  and  he  put  down  the  idolatrous  priests  whom  the 
kings  of  Judah  had  ordained  to  burn  incense  in  the 
high  places  in  the  cities  of  Judah  and  in  the  places 
round  about  Jerusalem  ;  them  also  that  burned  in- 
cense unto  Baal,  to  the  sun,  and  to  the  moon,  and 
to  the  planets,  and  to  all  the  host  of  heaven  .  .  . 
and  he  brake  down  the  houses  where  the  women 
wove  hangings  for  the  asherah.  ..."  These  hang- 
ings w^ere  of  the  richest  tissues,  mostly  of  fine  pur- 
ple, lavishly  embroidered ;  some  served  to  make 
tents  and  pavilions  in  the  sacred  groves,  luxurious 
resting-places  for  the  w^orshippers  who  flocked  thither 
as  on  some  delightful  pilgrimage  or  excursion,  and 
who  could  think  of  no  better  way  to  honor  the  god- 
dess of  joy  and  sensual  pleasure  than  spending  whole 
nights  in  feasting  and  inordinate  revelry  within  the 
sacred  precincts,  waited  on  by  the  women  and  girls 
devoted  to  her  service,  and  for  whom  this  w^as  an 
essential  part  of  their  religious  duties. 

8.  To  the  Canaanites,  the  Sun  and  Moon — the 
masculine  and  feminine  principles,  as  represented  by 
the  elements  of  fire  and  moisture,  the  great  Father 
and  Mother  of  beings — were  husband  and  wife.  So 
with  the  Baal  of  Tyre,  Melkarth,  Ashtoreth  was  as- 
sociated with  the  title  of  ''  Queen  "  (MiLKATH),  while 
in  Ascalon  and  the  other  cities  of  the  Philistine  con- 
federation they  both  assumed  the  peculiarity  noted 
above,  together  with  other  names,  and  became,  she, 
the  fish-goddess,  Derketo,  and  he,  the  fish-god, 
DagON  (from  dag,  fish,  in  the  Semitic  languages). 
In  a  temple  of  Dagon  there  was  a  statue  of  the  god 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN.  i  j  5 

which  is  described  as  having  the  face  and  hands  of 
a  man,  the  body  of  a  fish,  and  below  that  again 
human  feet.  It  is  not  difficidt  to  recognize  in  this 
description  an  exact  double  of  the  Babylonian 
Cannes,^  a  resemblance  enhanced  by  a  tradition 
current  at  a  very  late  period,  and  which  attributed  to 
Dagon  the  invention  of  the  plough,  making  him  the 
protector  of  agriculture  generally  and  the  dispenser 
of  food.  The  name  of  one  of  the  earliest  Assyrian 
patesis,  Ishmi-Dagan  (see  p.  2),  further  points  to  a 
closer  connection  between  the  two  myths  than  can 
as  yet  be  actually  proved  by  documents. 

9.  This,  however,  was  only  a  fanciful  local  trans- 
formation. The  genuine  Baal-Moloch  of  Syria  and 
Phoenicia  was  a  far  mightier  and  more  active  being. 
The  most  remarkable  feature  about  him  is  his 
double  nature,  combined  of  good  and  evil  qualities, 
of  which  now  the  former,  now  the  latter  become 
predominant,  until  the  one  being  splits  itself  into 
two,  decidedly  hostile  to  one  another.  The  exces- 
sive heat  of  summer,  which  dries  up  the  land  and 
kills,  that  is  Moloch,  the  terrible,  the  devourer,  the 
fierce  Sun-god.  The  moderate  warmth  of  spring, 
with  its  frequent  mild  and  vivifying  showers,  the 
warmth  that  coaxes  the  seed  into  life  and  fosters 
the  growth  of  the  crop  ;  or  the  gentle  glow  of  au- 
tumn, which  brings  back  the  clouds,  absent  for 
months  from  the  inflamed  atmosphere,  which  feeds 
the  thirst-parched,  panting  earth,  clothes  her  with 
a  second   robe   of   green,  and  mellows  her  fruits — 

*  See  illustration  No.  56  in  the  "  Story  of  Chaldea." 


I  1 6  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

* 

that  is  Baal,  the  benignant,  the  beneficent,  the 
good  Sun-god.  When  his  strength  decreases  and 
his  glory  pales  ;  when  his  beams  visit  the  earth  for 
a  shorter  space  each  day,  distant  and  slanting,  and 
powerless  to  stir  the  sap  in  the  trees,  the  seed  in 
the  earth — then  Baal  sleeps,  or  travels  far  away, 
somewhere  in  the  West,  and  there  is  mourning  for 
him  among  men,  until  the  course  of  the  months 
brings  him  back,  and  his  return,  or  awakening,  is 
hailed  with  tumultuous  rejoicings,  a  festival  which 
fell  in  our  month  of  March. 

lo.  There  is  a  famous  passage  of  the  Bible  bear- 
ing on  this  myth.  It  is  that  which  tells  how,  in 
the  reign  of  King  Ahab,  there  was  a  sore  famine, 
and  four  hundred  and  fifty  priests  of  Baal,  accom- 
panied by  four  hundred  priests  ''of  the  Ash- 
erah,"  assembled  on  Mount  Carmel  in  the  sight 
of  the  people  of  Israel,  and  were  challenged  by  the 
prophet  Elijah  to  make  the  fire  of  heaven  descend 
on  their  sacrifice  by  their  prayers.  "  And  they  took 
the  bullock  which  was  given  them,  and  they  dressed 
it,  and  called  on  the  name  of  Baal  from  morning 
even  until  noon,  saying,  O  Baal,  hear  us.  But  there 
was  no  voice,  nor  any  that  answered.  .  .  .  And 
they  leaped  about  the  altar  that  was  made.  And  it 
came  to  pass  at  noon,  that  Elijah  mocked  them  and 
said,  Cry  aloud  :  for  he  is  a  god  ;  either  he  is  mus- 
ing, or  he  is  gone  aside,  or  he  is  in  a  Journey,  or  per- 
adventure  he  sleepetJi,  and  must  be  aivaked''  (i  Kings, 
xviii.  26-27).  The  prophet's  taunt  is  not  merely 
a  masterly  piece  of  sarcasm,  as  which  it  is  often 
quoted,  but   a  direct  allusion    to   the   myth.     It   is 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN, 


ri; 


followed  by  a  very  remarkable  verse,  which  brings 
before  us  the  most  extraordinary  peculiarity  of 
Canaanitic  worship  :  ''  And  they  cried  aloud,  and 
cut  themselves  after  their  manner  with  knives  and 
with  lances,  till  the  blood  giisJied  out  upon  them'' 

II.  The  meaning  of  this,  to  all  appearance,  insane 
performance  is  this  :  the  priests,  seeing  their  prayers 
and  offering  unheeded,  proceeded  to  emphasize  both, 
by  adding  to  them  their  own  blood  and  voluntary 
suffering,  in  the  not  unnatural  supposition  that  the 
blood  of  men,  and  of  his  own  servants  at  that,  must 
be  more  precious  in  the  Baal's  sight  than  that  of  a 
mere  senseless  animal,  and  the  pain  which  they  in- 
flicted on  themselves  of  their  own  free  will  in  his 
honor  must  have  more  persuasive  virtue  than  the 
dying  pang  of  a  stupidly  passive  victim.  Supposing 
the  disappointment  and  fervid  excitement  to  go  on 
for  some  time  increasing  at  the  same  rate  and  to 
•  reach  absolute  desperation,  the  next  step  would  be  to 
offer  their  own  life,  or  that  of  one  or  several  hum.an 
victims,  as  a  last  means  of  moving  the  Baal's  pity. 
This  is  a  logical  necessity  contained  in  the  very  idea 
of  ''sacrifice,"  in  the  sense  which  the  entire  ancient 
world  gave  to  the  word.  And  accordingly,  the  hor- 
rible practice  of  human  sacrifices  has,  in  very  remote 
ages,  been  universal.  Not  one  of  the  ancient  relig- 
ions has  been  exempt  from  it.  But  most  of  them, 
as  far  as  our  knowledge  reaches,  show  only  rare  sur- 
vivals, half-obliterated  traces  of  it,  while  it  was  re- 
served for  the  sons  of  Canaan  to  retain  it  not  only 
down  to  historical  times,  not  only  to  a  comparatively 


1 1  g  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

late  period,  but  to  a  period  so  absolutely  recent  as 
the  first  century  of  our  era  (a.D.). 

12.  The   word    "sacrifice"    is    Latin,   and    means 
merely  ''a  sacred  act,"  any  rite  connected  with  wor- 
ship.    But  it  came  to  be  applied  exclusively  to  the 
rite  which  was  felt  to  be  the  most  holy,  awe-inspir- 
ing, mysterious,  to  bring  man  most  directly  into  the 
presence  of  the  deity,  into  personal  communication 
with    it — that    of   offering   gifts    to    it.     Now   gifts 
among   men  are  offered   on  one  of  two  impulses : 
that  of  love, — tokens  of  gratitude  and  general  friend- 
liness,— and  that  of  fear, — gifts  of  propitiation  ;  the 
latter  naturally  being  by  far  the  more  copious  and 
costly.      There   is  a  third   class  of   offerings  which 
cannot  properly  be  called  gifts ;  they  are  meant  as  a 
bribe  to   induce  the   receiver  to   do  a  certain   thing 
which  lies  outside  of  his  ordinary  functions,  to  con- 
fer  an    extra    favor.     The   costliness  of   such  gifts 
would  be  proportionate  to  the  favor  demanded,  and 
might   be   gradually  increased   if   the   receiver  were 
found  indifferent   or  obdurately  unwilling  to   exert 
his  power  on  behalf  of  the  petitioner.     Such  a  trans- 
action is  manifestly  more  a  bargain  than  a  sacrifice. 
Then  there  are  the  offerings  regulated  by  law  as  to 
time,  quality,  and  quantity,  which  come  more  prop- 
erly under  the    head   of    dues,   taxes,   tribute,   and 
which   are  cheerfully  awarded   to   the   ruler  of  the 
land  on  the  understanding  that  he  shall  have  of  the 
very  best  that  the  land  produces,  and  in  sufficient 
quantity,  but  shall  abstain  from  taking  more  or  all, 
as  he  has  the  power  and   is  admitted  to   have   the 
right  to  do.     It  is  evident  that  for  all  these  gifts,  of 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN.  ^  ig 

whatever  class,  a  return  is  expected  in  the  form  of 
material  goods  and  advantages.  Even  love-gifts  are 
no  exception,  for  the  giver  certainly  feels  himself 
entitled  to  kindliness  and  friendly  benevolence  on 
the  part  of  the  receiver,  and  the  powerful  generally 
express  these  feelings  by  acts  of  graciousness  and 
favor.  It  is  only  charity  which  bestows  its  gifts 
without  looking  for  a  return,  even  in  thanks.  But 
that  is  a  virtue  which  was  unknown  to  the  ancient 
world,  and  which  therefore  could  not  be  reflected 
in  its  religions. 

13.  Sacrifices  to  the  gods  exactly  answer  to  these 
several  classes  of  gifts  to  men  ;  the  feelings  that 
prompt  both,  their  motives,  their  objects,  are  the 
same.  In  order  thoroughly  to  realize  the  very 
practical,  entirely  unromantic  nature  of  the  institu- 
tion, we  must  put  ourselves  in  the  ancient  worship- 
per's place,  identify  ourselves  with  his  mode  of 
thinking,  and  adopt  the  absolute,  intense  anthro- 
pomorphism, which  pervades  his  conception  of  the 
deity."^  The  god  to  him  is  a  king,  *'  only  more  so," — 
more  benevolent,  more  beneficent  when  in  a  kindly 
mood,  infinitely  more  powerful,  and  proportionately 
more  terrible  in  his  wrath  when  offended.  He 
claims  certain  dues  and  watches  jealously  that  they 
shall  be  rendered  him.  He  owns  the  land  wherein 
he  allows  his  worshippers  to  dwell.  He  has  given  it 
to  them  with  all  it  contains  and  bears,  to  use  and  to 
enjoy.  But  of  these  good  things  a  fair  share  is  due 
to  him,  the  Supreme  Landlord,  in  common  gratitude. 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  355-357. 


t20  THE  StOkY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

His  should  be  at  least  the  male  first -born,  of  every 
domestic  animal,  the  first-fruits  of  every  crop,  and 
a  portion — generally  the  tenth — of  all  the  prod- 
ucts both  of  the  soil  and  of  men's  industry,  to 
be  paid  in  at  stated  periods,  solemnly  consecrated 
as  festive  at  the  nearest  temple.  Festive  such 
occasions  must  be,  and  times  of  rejoicing,  lest 
the  deity  receive  the  impression  that  the  debt  was 
grudgingly  and  unwillingly  paid,  and  in  its  anger  at 
the  slight  and  ingratitude,  may  withdraw  its  boun- 
ties, or  even  inflict  chastisement.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  the  quantity  of  live-stock  and  produce  thus 
accumulated  periodically  at  the  various  places  of 
worship  must  have  been  something  enormous.  It 
is  also  understood  that  a  portion  of  the  booty 
made  in  war — not  less  than  the  tenth — of  right  be- 
longs to  the  gods,  whose  favor  has  prospered  the 
nation's  arms. 

14.  There  were  two  ways  of  performing  the  sacri- 
fice :  the  thing  offered  could  be  either  destroyed, 
consumed  on  the  altar  by  fire,  or  only  consecrated 
to  the  use  of  the  sanctuary.  The  first  way,  the 
so-called  burnt-offering,  was  of  course  the  most  com- 
plete and  direct.  It  was  supposed  to  convey  the 
gift  and  the  prayer  or  the  thanksgiving  straight  to 
the  deity.  Hence  the  expression  constantly  used, 
''  The  gods  smell  a  sacrifice  "  ;  if  they  "  smell  a  szveet 
savor"  the  sacrifice  is  acceptable.  ''Yahveh  (Je- 
hovah, *'the  Lord,")  smelled  a  svVeet  savor,"  says 
Genesis."^     "  Let  Yahveh  smell  an    offering,"    says 

*  We  find  the  identical  expression  in  the  Izdubar  Epic :  "  The 
gods  smelled  a  savor;  the  gods  smelled  a  sweet  savor."  See 
'•  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  316,  359. 


The  religion  of  can  a  am.  \  2 1 

David.  On  ordinary  occasions  it  was  only  the  live 
stock — the  bullocks  and  the  calves,  the  kids  and  the 
lambs — that  were  thus  offered  whole,  with  some  of 
the  produce  of  the  earth,  especially  grain,  flour,  oil. 
But  even  that  was  rare.  The  more  customary  way 
was  to  slay  the  victim,  to  burn  some  choicest  por- 
tions of  the  flesh  and  fat  on  the  altar,  then  to  lay 
aside  an  abundant  supply  for  the  priests  and  temple 
ministers,  and  let  the  people  feast  on  the  rest.  Of 
the  liquid  offerings — milk,  wine,  oil — some  would 
be  poured  into  the  altar  flame  or  on  the  ground, — 
(that  was  the  drink-offering  or  libation), — and  the 
rest  would  be  *'  consecrated  "  like  the  fruits,  and  the 
greater  part  of  produce  of  all  sorts,  for  the  use  of 
the  sanctuary  and  its  servants.  Thus  an  income 
was  formed,  sufficient  to  defray  the  repairs  and 
adornment  of  the  buildings  and  shrine,  to  provide 
for  the  priests  and  attendants  on  a  scale  of  great 
magnificence,  and  to  keep  the  temple  treasury 
always  well  filled.  On  extraordinary  occasions,  when 
the  sacrifice  offered  by  an  individual  or  a  commu- 
nity was  an  ''  expiatory  "  one — i.  e.,  offered  in  atone- 
ment for  some  crime,  in  deprecation  of  the  deity's 
wrath  for  some  offence  or  omission  in  the  observances 
of  worship, — or  when  the  object  was  to  obtain  some 
great  and  uncommon  mercy,  personal  or  national, 
**  consecration  "  was  deemed  insufficient:  the  sacri- 
fice must  be  complete  ;  nothing  short  of  absolute 
renunciation  could  satisfy  the  offended  majesty  or 
merit  a  special  divine  interference.  On  such  occa- 
sions whole  herds  and  flocks  and  ship-loads  of  pre- 
cious wares  have  frequently  been  consumed  by  the 


122  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

sacrificial   flames,   fed  with   the   costHest  perfumes, 
oils,  and  spices. 

15.  It  stands  to  reason  that  the  thing  offered  in 
sacrifice,  whatever  it  is,  whether  living  or  inanimate, 
must  be  the  best  of  its  kind,  unsullied  by  use,  unim- 
paired in  beauty,  and  unbroken  in  spirit  and  strength 
by  work.  Would  a  man  present  to  his  superior  or 
to  his  friend  a  cast-off  garment,  a  shorn  sheep,  a 
galled  ox,  a  horse  sore  from  the  harness  or  saddle  ? 
And  if  he  did,  would  not  the  receiver  turn  on  him 
in  well  deserved  anger,  and  instead  of  favor  deal 
vengeance  to  him  ?  Therefore  the  victim  reserved 
for  sacrifice  must  be  perfect  and  without  a  blemish, 
the  fairest  in  form  and  color  ;  the  heifer  and  the 
steer  must  not  have  known  the  ignominy  of  the 
goad  and  plough,  nor  the  steed  the  humiliation  of 
obedience,  or  the  female  animals  have  been  wearied 
with  the  cares  and  labors  of  motherhood.  Besides, 
it  would  be  irreverent  to  offer  an  animal  after  having 
drawn  profit  from  it,  in  the  shape  of  either  work  or 
increase.  Naturally,  too,  if  the  animal  is  a  favorite, 
or  an  especially  valuable  one  from  rareness  and  ex- 
cellence of  breed,  the  sacrifice  will  be  all  the  more 
acceptable,  and  probably  the  more  efficacious,  as 
manifesting  the  greater  and  more  ungrudging  zeal. 

16.  It  is  but  according  to  human  nature  that  the 
zeal  and  lavishness  displayed  should  be  in  propor. 
tion  to  the  emergency  or  to  the  cause  of  especial 
gratitude.  In  ordinarily  prosperous  times,  a  god- 
fearing man  would  make  it  a  point  to  do  all  that 
was  right  in  the  way  of  regulation  sacrifices  and 
family  thank-offerings — for   births,    marriages,    safe 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


123 


return  from  journeys,  successful  enterprise,  and  the 
like — but  would  not  feel  called  upon  to  exceed  the 
measure  demanded  of  him  by  custom  and  law.  It 
is  when  the  heart  overflows  with  joy  or  is  wrung 
with  anguish  and  terror  that  men  cease  to  calculate, 
that  they  in  a  measure  lose  count  of  their  w^ealth 
and  the  relative  value  of  things.  There  are  mercies 
so  great  and  evils  so  overpoweringly  terrible,  that 
to  requite  the  one  and  avert  or  obtain  relief  from 
the  others,  men  under  the  influence  of  excessive 
excitement  would  hold  all  they  own  a  cheap  price, 
all  their  possessions,  their  own  lives,  their  own  flesh 
and  blood.  From  these  premises:  first,  the  con- 
ception of  a  deity  that  can  be  won  by  gifts  to  per- 
form or  abstain  from  certain  acts,  and  who  is  in- 
fluenced in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the  offering  ; 
and,  second,  a  state  of  feeling  so  overwrought  as 
to  have  temporarily  slipped  from  the  control  of 
reason,  the  necessary  logical  consequence  will  be — 
human  sacrifices,  human  life  being  man's  most 
precious  possession.  The  line  of  logical  sequence 
being  strained  to  the  uttermost,  the  sacrifice  of 
babes,  of  children,  nay,  of  favorite  children,  not 
only  as  the  purest  of  all  possible  victims,  but  also 
the  most  effective,  since  their  immolation  carries 
to  the  throne  of  the  deity,  in  addition  to  their  own 
worth,  the  superadded  sum  of  sacrifice  wrung  from 
their  parents'  tortured  feelings. 

17.  Strictly  speaking,  the  sacrifice  of  children  w^as 
the  deity's  due  in  all  cases  and  at  all  times,  as  a 
portion  of  the  nation's  wealth  and  increase.  If  the 
first-born  of  every  domestic  animal  are  demanded. 


1 24  THE  STOR  Y  OF  ASSYRIA. 

why  should  those  of  the  master  be  excepted  ?  This 
obHgation  we  find  formally  and  unconditionally  rec- 
ognized by  the  Hebrews,  the  only  Semitic  people 
whose  laws  are  before  us  in  their  entirety.  This  is 
the  notable  passage  (Exodus,  xxii.  29)  wherein  this 
important  point  is  laid  down :  "  Thou  shalt  not 
delay  to  offer  the  abundance  of  thy  fruits  and  of 
thy  liquors.  TJie  first-born  of  thy  sons  sJialt  thou 
give  unto  vie.  Likewise  shalt  thou  do  with  thine 
oxen  and  with  thy  sheep :  seven  days  it  shall  be 
with  its  dam,  on  the  eighth  day  thou  shalt  give  it 
to  me."  Considering  that  human  sacrifices,  and  es- 
pecially of  children,  were  a  standing  institution 
among  other  Semitic  and  the  Canaanitic  races, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  originally,  in  prehis- 
torically  remote  times,  this  decree  was  understood 
literally  and  acted  upon.  When  the  Jews  make 
their  appearance  on  the  historical  stage  of  the  world, 
however,  their  conception  of  divine  goodness  as 
overbalancing  divine  sternness  is  already  too  ad- 
vanced to  allow  of  such  barbarous  literalness,  and 
we  see  sacrifice,  as  regards  the  human  first-born 
only,  modified  into  consecration.  Still,  enough  of 
the  original  meaning  of  the  law  lingers  in  the  peo- 
ple's consciousness  to  make  a  ransom  necessary, 
which  we  see  fixed  at  the  uncostly  rate  of  a  pair 
of  turtle-doves  or  two  young  pigeons — an  offering 
within  the  means  of  the  poorest.  (See  Luke's  Gos- 
pel, ii.  22-24.) 

18.  Human  sacrifices  are  so  inevitably  an  out- 
come of  the  coarsely  material  and  anthropomorphic 
conception  of  the  deity  common  to  the  entire  an- 


THE  RELIGION-  OF  CANAAN.  125 

cient  world,  that  we  cannot  be  surprised  if  we  find 
them  accredited  as  of  directly  divine  institution.  It 
was  but  natural  that  the  gods  who  gave  men  laws 
and  taught  them  the  practices  of  religion  and  all 
that  pertains  to  a  state  of  civilization  should  have 
instituted  this  most  sacred  and  awful  of  rites. 
There  are  among  the  various  nations  several  stories 
and  legends  which  embody  this  idea.  One  of  the 
most  remarkable  is  a  Phoenician  one  which  we  find 
in  some  fragments  quoted  by  late  writers  out  of  a 
large  work  on  Phoenician  cosmogony  and  theogony 
attributed  to  an  ancient  priest,  SanchoniaTHO, 
said  to  have  lived  over  a  thousand  years  before 
Christ.  In  one  of  these  fragments  we  are  told 
that  the  supreme  god  himself,  once,  ''when  a 
plague  and  mortality  happened,  offered  up  his 
only  son  as  a  sacrifice  to  his  father,  Heaven " ; 
and  in  another  the  same  account  is  given  in  a  less 
meagre  form,  wherein  the  origin  of  it  can  be  plainly 
discerned  :  "  It  was  the  custom  among  the  ancients 
in  times  of  great  calamity,  in  order  to  prevent 
the  ruin  of  all,  for  the  rulers  of  the  city  or  na- 
tion to  sacrifice  to  the  avenging  deity  the  most 
beloved  of  their  children,  as  the  price  of  redemp- 
tion. They  who  were  devoted  for  this  purpose 
were  offered  mystically "  {i.  e.,  with  ceremonies  of 
mysteriously  sacred — or  mystical — significance,  in 
memory  of,  and  allusion  to,  the  divine  origin  of  the 
practice).  For — the  text  goes  on  to  say — the  god 
(II)  had  an  only  son,  and  "  when  great  danger  from 
war  beset  the  land,  he  adorned  the  altar,  and  in- 
vested   this  son  with  the  emblems  of  royalty,  and 


126  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

* 

sacrificed  him."  It  is  evident  that  the  legend  has 
been  invented  in  order  to  explain  the  custom  and 
lend  it  the  consecration  of  divine  authority,  without 
which  so  monstrous  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature 
could  never  have  obtained.  Such  legends,  purport- 
ing to  give  the  origin  or  cause  of  some  particular 
custom,  name,  belief,  etc.,  have  been  so  numerous 
throughout  antiquity  as  to  have  been  classed  under 
a  special  name,  that  of  AlTlOLOGlCAL  Myths  (from 
the  Greek  word  aitia,  "  cause  "). 

19.  It  is  extremely  startling  to  find  in  the  Bible 
a  description,  terribly  impressive  because  so  simply 
given,  of  an  undoubtedly  historical  occurrence,  which 
is  the  exact  reproduction  on  earth  of  the  act  which, 
according  to  the  ancient  tradition,  takes  place  some- 
where among  the  gods.  It  is  an  incident  of  a  war 
— (about  850  B.C.) — between  the  Israelites  and 
MOABITES,  a  Semitic  people  very  nearly  akin  to 
them,  whose  king,  Mesha,  has  left  a  famous  inscrip- 
tion showing  him  to  be  a  very  zealous  worshipper 
of  his  national  god,  Khemosh.*  ''The  Israel- 
ites rose  up  and  smote  the  Moabites,  so  that  they 
fled  before  them  ;  and  they  went  forward  into  the 
land  smiting  the  Moabites.  And  they  beat  down 
the  cities  ;  and  on  every  good  piece  of  land  they  cast 
every  man  his  stone,  and  filled  it ;  and  they  stopped 
all  the  fountains  of  water,  and  felled  all  the  good 
trees,  until  in  Kir-Haresheth  only  they  left  the  stones 
thereof  (a  city  a  little  to  the  east  of  the  southern  end 
of  the  Dead  Sea) ;  howbeit  the  slingers  went  about 

*  See  Appendix  to  Chapter  VI. 


THE  RELIGIOX  OF  CANAAN. 


127 


and  smote  it.  And  when  the  king  of  Moab  saw 
that  the  battle  was  too  sore  for  him,  he  took  with 
him  seven  hundred  men  that  drew  sword,  to  break 
through  unto  the  king  of  Edom  :  but  they  could 
not.  Then  Jic  took  his  eldest  son  that  should  have 
reigned  in  his  place,  and  offered  him  for  a  burnt-offer- 
ing upon  the  ivall.  And  there  came  great  wrath 
upon  Israel,  and  they  departed  from  him  and  re- 
turned to  their  own  land."     (2  Kings,  iii.  24-27.) 

20.  The  ancient  Hindus  had  a  legend  of  some- 
what similar  import.  It  was  very  old,  and  we  no- 
where find  it  formally  related.  But  it  is  alluded  to 
in  one  of  their  sacred  hymns  as  something  well 
known.  It  appears  that  they  had  imagined  the 
universal  masculine  principle  in  the  form  of  a  gigan- 
tic male  being  who  is  called  Man  ^par  excellence), 
yet  is  represented  as  divine,  the  master  of  the  uni- 
verse, who  is  all  things  that  are,  have  been,  and  will 
be,  and  from  whom  all  things  proceed.  When  the 
gods  offered  up  the  Divine  Man  as  a  sacrifice,  says 
the  hymn,  spring  was  its  clarified  butter  (poured 
over  the  victim),  summer  its  fuel,  and  autumn  its 
accompanying  oblation  (offering  of  fruit  and  cakes). 
''This  victim,  born  in  the  beginning  of  time,  they 
immolated  and  sprinkled  with  water  on  the  sacri- 
ficial grass.  .  .  .  When  the  gods,  in  performing  the 
sacrifice,  bound  him  as  a  victim,  seven  bars  of  wood 
were  placed  around  him,  thrice  seven  layers  of  wood 
were  piled  for  him.  .  .  .  These  were  the  first  institu- 
tionsy  By  the  immolation  of  the  Divine  Man  all 
the  worlds  and  all  contained  therein  is  said  to  have 
been  created.     Accordingly  the  sacred  books  of  the 


J 28  ^-^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

Hindus  contain  the  most  formal  and  detailed  in- 
structions about  human  sacrifices,  on  what  occasions 
and  with  what  ceremonies  they  are  to  be  offered, 
— sometimes  on  an  enormous  scale,  as  many  as  150 
human  victims  at  one  sacrifice.  Of  course,  with 
greater  enlightenment  and  milder  manners,  these 
barbarities  came  into  disuse.  The  divine  will  was 
supposed  to  have  declared  against  them  and  opened 
an  escape  for  the  victims,  and  the  popular  feeling 
was,  as  usual,  embodied  in  parables  and  stories. 
One  of  these  tells  of  a  youth  who,  when  already 
bound  to  the  stake  and  awaiting  the  mortal  blow, 
prayed  to  all  the  gods  in  succession,  and  his  bonds 
were  miraculously  loosened.  Another  story  tells  of 
a  woman  in  a  similar  predicament,  in  answer  to 
whose  prayer  a  shower  of  rain  was  sent  down  on 
the  already  blazing  p}'re  and  fell  only  on  that  one 
spot.  And  when  bloody  sacrifices,  even  of  animals, 
were  in  great  part  abolished,  and  offerings  of  cakes 
of  rice  and  wheat  were  substituted,  the  humane 
change  was  authorized  by  a  parable  which  told 
how  the  sacrificial  virtue  had  left  the  highest  and 
most  valuable  victim,  man,  and  descended  into  the 
horse,  from  the  horse  into  the  steer,  from  the  steer 
into  the  goat,  from  the  goat  into  the  sheep,  and 
from  that  at  last  passed  into  the  earth,  where  it 
was  found  abiding  in  the  grains  of  rice  and  wheat 
laid  in  it  for  seed.  This  was  an  ingenious  way  of 
intimating  that  henceforth  harmless  offerings  of 
rice  and  wheat  cakes  would  be  as  acceptable  to  the 
deity  as  the  living  victims,  human  and  animal,  for- 
jnerly  were.     That  the  change  could   not  be  made 


THE  RELFGION-  OF  CANAAN.  120 

without  alleging  authority  higher  than  men's  own 
feelings  is  obvious,  for  necessarily  divine  sanction 
was  needed  to  abrogate  a  custom  divinely  instituted. 

21.  This,  of  course,  is  the  true  meaning  also  of 
the  biblical  legend  of  Abraham  sacrificing  his  son 
Isaac.  God  demands  the  sacrifice,  but  at  the  de- 
cisive moment  stays  the  uplifted  knife  and  substi- 
tutes a  ram,  thereby  signifying  his  willingness  to  be 
content  with  the  less  precious  victim,  and  spare  the 
children  of  men.  The  same  legend  appears  scarcely 
altered  among  those  of  the  ancient  Greeks :  there  it 
is  a  fair  and  favorite  daughter  whom  a  great  king, 
her  father,  is  commanded  to  immolate  for  the  good 
of  the  people,  and  for  whom  a  white  doe  is  substi- 
tuted. Other  instances  might  be  quoted  from  the 
legendary  lore  of  various  peoples,  all  tending,  to 
show  how  increasing  culture  taught  men  a  nobler 
and  purer  faith,  the  certainty  that  the  deity,  boun- 
teous giver  of  life  and  human  affections,  could  not 
delight  in  wanton  slaughter  and  the  trampling  out 
of  the  very  feelings  it  inspired  as  the  holiest  and 
sweetest  in  nature. 

22.  Not  so,  however,  with  the  heathen  Semites 
and  the  Canaanites.  Their  fierce  religion  knew  no 
relenting,  their  culture  no  softening  influence. 
Owing  to  a  peculiarly  ruthless  and  sanguinary  bent 
of  their  nature,  a  strange  fervidness  and  readiness  to 
intense  excitement,  they  seem  to  have  luxuriated 
as  much  in  excess  of  pain  as  in  excess  of  joy.  It 
is  ever  thus  with  natures  both  sensual  and  emo- 
tional to  excess.  They  are  strongly  inclined  to 
effeminacy,  and,  by  a  strange  but   natural  rebound, 

9 


I30 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


to  revolting  cruelty,  and,  on  occasions,  self-torture. 
The  emotional  nature  has  an  insatiable  craving  for 
strong,  even  violent  sensations.  The  effeminate 
indulgence  in  luxury  and  material  enjoyments  of 
every  sort,  by  producing  satiety,  blunts  the  capa- 
bility for  receiving  sensations.  Yet  they  must  be 
procured  at  all  costs,  so  the  cloyed  and  wearied 
nerves  seek  them  in  more  and  more  powerful  irri- 
tants. Every  natural  feeling  of  the  human  breast, 
to  be  felt  at  all,  must  be  heightened  and  intensified 
a  hundredfold.  Ecstasies  of  joy,  ecstasies  of  terror, 
ecstasies  of  mourning  ;  otherwise — a  blank,  appar- 
ent apathy,  an  almost  lifeless  calm,  superficial  and 
deceptive,  however. 

23.  Such  Orientals  have  always  been,  such  they 
are  now.  This  is  the  secret  of  the  majestic  impassi- 
bility, the  scant  and  compassed  words,  the  few 
and  measured  gestures  which  strike  with  a  sort 
of  wondering  awe  all  who  have  any  intercourse 
with  them.  They  are  not  less  capable  of  being 
roused  to  frantic  excitement  than  were  their  ances- 
tors of  three  thousand  years  ago,  but  the  modern 
conditions  of  life  offer  fewer  occasions,  therefore 
the  quiescent  intervals  are  longer,  and  when  out- 
breaks do  occur  they  take  the  unreflecting  world  by 
surprise,  as  something  incongruous  and  unexpected. 
Now  as  then,  too,  these  outbreaks  are  mainly  due 
to  overwrought  religious  feeling.  Massacres  and 
wars  are  all  prompted  and  inspirited  by  fanaticism, 
aided  by  the  maddening  effects  of  the  powerful 
opiate  stimulants  in  which  they  immoderately  in- 
dulge. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN,  i  ^  ^ 

24.  The  ancient  Asiatics  found  their  supply 
of  excitement  mainly  in  the  rites  of  their  relig- 
ion. They  entered  into  it  with  the  intense- 
ness  of  nervous  exaltation  which  was  their  breath 
of  life.  Whether  they  were  celebrating  the  joy- 
ful spring  festival,  the  reunion  of  the  young  Sun- 
god  risen  from  the  dead  and  the  long  widowed 
goddess  of  Nature,  or  mourning  his  untimely  end 
at  the  hands  of  Winter  or  torrid  Midsummer  and 
her  bereavement,  they  excited  themselves  and  each 
other,  in  the  processions  which  were  a  principal 
feature  of  every  festival,  with  shouts  and  wails,  and 
noisiest  demonstrations  of  sorrow  or  exultation,  as 
the  occasion  required,  to  the  verge  of  insanity.  The 
priests,  leading  the  way,  gave  the  example,  and 
quickly  reached  the  stage  at  which  neither  shouts, 
nor  wails,  nor  tearing  of  clothes  could  satisfy  the 
emotional  nature  let  loose,  when  blood  and  pain 
alone  could  allay  the  nervous  irritation  arrived  at 
its  height.  Then  they  would  tear  their  flesh  with 
their  nails,  wound  and  gash  it  with  knives  and  lan- 
cets. The  contagion  spread,  and  in  the  crowds  that 
followed  great  numbers  vied  with  them  in  self- 
laceration,  in  inflicting  tortures  and  mutilations 
on  themselves.  Nay,  it  was  no  unfrequent  oc- 
currence to  see  some  unfortunate  fanatic  fall  into 
a  sort  of  trance,  and  seek  death  under  the  wheels 
of  the  ponderous  chariot  that  carried  the  idol. 
Thus  a  day  begun  with  the  dignified  solemn  cere- 
monial and  gorgeous  display  so  dear  to  the  Ori- 
ental fancy,  was  sure  to  end  in  a  tumult  of  un- 
bridled, licentious  merry-making  if  the  occasion  were 


132 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


a  joyful  one,  of  hideous  bloodiness  and  inordinate 
lamentation  if  sorrowful.  This  kind  of  religious 
frenzy  was  stamped  by  the  Greeks  with  the  very 
apt  name  of  ORGIES — the  Greek  word  '' orge'' 
meaning  ''violent  passionate  emotion" — and  the 
religions  which  bore  this  violent  character — i.  e.,  all 
the  Canaanitic  and  Semitic  religions  of  Syria  and 
Western  Asia  generally — are  often  called  ORGIASTIC. 
It  scarcely  needs  demonstration  that  human  sacri- 
fices were  but  a  necessary  culmination  of  such  a 
state  of  mind. 

25.  Nor  will  it  be  wondered  at  that  the  culture 
of  these  nations  should  have  failed  to  humanize  and 
purify  their  religious  conceptions  and  practices- 
For,  as  was  said  above,  what  a  people  is,  that, 
emphatically,  its  religion  is,  its  gods  will  be  ;  and, 
besides,  culture  brings  out  a  race's  inborn  gifts,  de- 
velops its  natural  qualities  to  their  greatest  perfec- 
tion. Thus,  then,  we  see  that,  far  from  falling  into 
disuse,  the  practice  of  human  and  child-sacrifice 
increased  in  frequency  and  virulence.  From  being 
confined  to  times  of  war,  drought  and  pestilence,  as 
we  are  expressly  told  it  originally  was,  we  see  it  be- 
come a  permanent  and  regularly  recurring  feature 
of  Canaanitic  worship.  Human  sacrifices  took 
place  yearly  in  Phoenicia  and  in  its  colonies.  In 
times  of  public  calamities,  extra  sacrifices  were 
ordered.  It  would  not,  however,  be  reasonably  ex- 
pected that  such  cruel  offerings  should  have  been 
laid  on  the  altar  of  any  divinity  indifferently.  Gen- 
tle deities — the  beneficent  Sun-god,  or  Ashtoreth,  the 
mild  fosterer  of  life — could  not  rejoice   in  the  de- 


THE  RELIGIOxV  OF  CANAAN.  j  3  ^ 

struction  of  the  existence  which  they  gave :  such  an 
offering  would  have  been  rather  an  offence  and  an 
insult  than  a  propitiation.  But  it  was  a  meet  one 
for  the  Baal  Moloch,  the  destroyer,  the  fierce  Sun- 
god  (seep.  115).  Drought  and  pestilence  were  of  his 
sending,  and  war,  with  its  bloodshed  and  suffering, 
was  his  delight.  When  one  of  these  plagues  visited 
the  land,  or — as  is  so  frequent  in  the  East — all 
three  together,  with  their  accompaniment  of  im- 
pending or  actual  famine,  then  Moloch  reigned 
supreme.  The  kindly  deities  were  forgotten,  their 
rites  left  in  abeyance,  their  priests  and  priestesses, 
for  the  time,  unhonored.  Then  was  the  grim  har- 
vest gathered  for  him,  and  the  more  desperate  the 
danger,  the  heavier  the  visitation,  the  more  lavishly 
was  the  god  entreated. 

26.  Owing  to  the  scantiness  of  literary  monu- 
ments left  by  the  Phoenicians,  we  should  know 
nothing  of  the  manner  in  which  these  dreadful  rites 
were  accomplished,  had  not  the  Greek  writers  de- 
scribed with  ample  details  what  took  place  on  such 
occasions  in  Carthage,  the  Phoenicians'  greatest  and 
most  powerful  colony,  as  wealthy  as  the  mother- 
city.  Tyre,  herself,  with  which  she  never  entirely 
severed  her  connection.  Even  when  full-erown  and 
wholly  independent,  Carthage  sent  a  yearly  volun- 
tary tribute  to  the  temple  of  the  Syrian  Melkarth, 
as  well  as  a  large  percentage  of  the  booty  made  in 
war.  We  may  therefore  safely  presume  that  the 
religious  bond  was  kept  intact,  and  that  the  colony 
had,  for  what  it  did,  the  authority  of  the  example 
and  traditions  of  the  metropolis. 


134  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

27.  It  appears  that  there  was  in  Carthage  a  statue 
of  Moloch  specially  destined  to  receive  human 
burnt-offerings.  It  was  colossal  in  size,  made  en- 
tirely of  brass,  and  hollow  inside.  It  had  a  bull's 
head,  the  bull  being  a  favorite  emblem  of  physical 
might,  and  therefore  of  the  male  principle  in  na- 
ture, of  the  Sun-god  at  his  fiercest.  The  statue's 
arms  were  of  monstrous  length,  and  in  its  huge 
outstretched  hands  the  victims  were  laid,  which 
the  arms,  worked  by  chains  and  pulleys  placed 
behind  its  back,  lifted  up  to  an  opening  in  the 
breast,  till  they  rolled  into  the  furnace  blazing  in- 
side of  the  statue,  on  an  invisible  grate,  through 
which  the  cinders  and  ashes  fell,  forming  a  gradu- 
ally increasing  heap  between  the  colossus'  legs. 
It  is  supposed  that  grown-up  victims  were  first 
killed,  but  it  is  certain  that  children  were  consigned 
living  to  the  horrible  red-hot  hands.  No  sorrow 
was  to  be  shown.  While  being  prepared  for  immo- 
lation, the  children's  cries  were  to  be  soothed  with 
caresses.  Most  hideous  and  incredible  as  it  seems, 
the  mothers  had  to  be  present,  and  to  repress  their 
tears,  their  sobs,  every  sign  of  grief,  as  otherwise 
they  would  not  only  have  lost  all  the  credit  reflected 
on  them  by  the  great  honor  thus  publicly  paid 
them,  but  might  have  drawn  down  the  anger  of  the 
vengeful  god  on  the  community,  and  one  unwilling 
offering,  one  begrudged  victim  might  have  defeated 
the  entire  sacrifice,  nay,  made  matters  worse  than 
they  were  before.  So  weak-minded  a  mother  would 
have  been  branded  for  life  as  unpatriotic  and  un- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


35 


worthy.  An  incessant  noise  of  drums  and  flutes 
was  kept  up,  not  only  to  drown  the  little  victims' 
cries,  but  also  to  heighten  the  public  exaltation. 
The  rite  was  doubtless  accompanied  with  solemn 
dances,  at  least  in  Syria  this  was  certainly  the  case ; 
and  hymns  of  praise  and  invocations  were  sung,  as 
customary  in  Phoenicia  and  Canaan, — a  sort  of  lit- 
any wherein  the  name  of  the  god  constantly  recurred. 
And  if  the  priests  had  any  doubts  of  the  sacrifice 
being  acceptable  to  him,  they  were  bound  to  sup- 
port and  emphasize  it  by  shedding  their  own  blood. 
The  Bible-writers,  in  speaking  of  such  sacrifices, 
mostly  use  the  expression  :  ''  To  cause  their  chil- 
dren to  pass  tJiroiigJi  the  fire  unto"  or  in  honor  of 
Moloch  or  Baal.  Hence  it  has  been  supposed  that 
in  most  cases  a  ceremony  of  consecration  through 
fire  took  the  place  of  actual  immolation.  But  there 
seems  to  be  nothing  to  support  this  hypothesis;  in- 
deed, many  passages  are  explicitly  against  it.  In 
speaking  to  Jerusalem  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  to 
reprove  the  royal  city  for  her  backslidings  and  in- 
iquities, Ezekiel  says :  "  .  .  .  .  t/ioit  hast  slain  my 
children  and  delivered  them  up,  in  causing  them  to 
pass  through  the  fire  unto  them  ;  "  and,  a  few  verses 
further  on  :  ''....  because  of  all  the  idols  of  thy 
abominations,  and  for  the  blood  of  thy  children 
which  thou  hast  given  unto  them.  .  .  ."  For  the 
Jews  had  so  thoroughly  adopted  the  custom  of  their 
neighbors  and  kindred  nations,  that  they  had  a  place 
outside  the  walls  of  Jerusalem,  the  valley  of  Tophet, 
specially  devoted  to  the  worship  of  Baal,  where  the 


136 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


sacrificial    pyres   were  constantly  kept   blazing  and 
were  often  fed  with  child-victims.^ 

28.  On  the  principle  that  the  gift  is  acceptable 
in  proportion  as  it  is  precious  to  the  giver,  the 
national  sacrifices  were  to  consist  of  none  but  chil- 
dren of  the  noblest  houses,  and  when  parents  were 
convicted  of  eluding  the  demand  the  punishment 
was  terrible.  Once  when  the  Carthaginians  had 
been  beaten  in  a  very  important  battle,  the  loss  of 
which  endangered  the  commonwealth,  we  are  told 
that  a  severe  investigation  showed  that  the  citv 
nobles  had  for  some  time  been  in  the  habit  of  pur- 
chasinsf  and  fattening;  low-born  children  and  substi- 
tuting  these  for  their  own  offspring.  To  this  im- 
piety the  anger  of  the  god  was  attributed,  and  a 
national  expiatory  sacrifice  was  ordered  on  an 
unusually  large  scale  :  two  hundred  boys  of  the 
noblest  ruling  families  perished,  and  of  the  par- 
ents, some  authors  say  that  three  hundred  who 
had  been  guilty  of  the  accursed  malpractice  vol- 
untarily gave  their  own  lives.  One  shudders 
to  think  what  opportunities  were  thus  presented 
to  priests  and  to  others  for  the  indulgence  of  fam- 
ily feuds  and  personal  grudges.  Not  until  the 
reign  of  the  Roman  emperor,  Tiberius,  a  contem- 
porary of  Christ,  was  the  execrable  custom  offi- 
cially put  a  stop  to  in  Carthage.  The  Romans, 
then  the  rulers  of  the  world,  were  not  noted  for 
gentleness  or  tender-heartedness.  Yet  when  a 
Roman    legion    under    the   reign    of   that    emperor 


* 


See  2  Kings,  xxiii.  10;  Jeremiah,  vii.  31  ;  xix.  5-7. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


137 


came  upon  the  priests  of  Moloch  in  the  midst  of  a 
child-sacrifice,  so  great  was  their  horror  and  pity 
that  they  not  only  dispersed  the  crowd,  and  re- 
leased the  victims,  as  many  as  were  still  living,  but 
hung  every  one  of  the  priests  ;  after  which  a  law 
was  issued,  forbidding  the  repetition  of  the  unnat- 
ural rite  in  future.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
it  was  indulged  \\\  occasionally  and  surreptitiously 
for  another  hundred  years  or  two — in  fact,  until 
Christianity  gained  a  firm  hold  on  the  African  prov- 
inces of  the  Roman  Empire.^'" 

29.  Sometimes  human  sacrifices  were  ofTered  in 
gratitude,  or  in  accomplishment  of  a  vow.  The 
Carthaginians  sacrificing  their  fairest  women-cap- 
tives to  Moloch  after  a  victory  give  us  an  instance 
of  the  former  custom,  while  the  latter  is  strikingly 
exemplified  in  the  famous  story  of  Jephthah  and 
his  daughter.  "And  Jephthah  vowed  a  vow  unto 
Yahveh  and  said:  If  thou  wilt  indeed  deliver  the 
children  of  Ammon  into  mine  hand,  then  it  shall 
be  that  whosoever  cometh  forth  of  the  doors  of  my 
house  to  meet  me,  when  I  return  in  peace  from 
the  children  of  Ammon,  it  shall  be  Yahveh's,  and  I 
will  ofTer  it  up  for  a  burnt-offering"  (Judges,  xi. 
30-31).  But  a  wholesale  form  of  this  kind  of  sacri- 
fice, "  vowing  "  or  '' devoting  "  things,  animals  and 
persons  to  the  deity  as  a  thank-offering  for  the  re- 
ception of  a  certain  boon   petitioned   for,  was  long 

*  See  Miiriter,  "  Religion  der  Karthager."  For  a  thrilling  and  most 
learned  description  of  a  child-sacrifice  on  a  large  scale  see  the  chap- 
ter "Moloch"  in  Gustave  Flaubert's  Carthaginian  novel  "  Sa- 
lamnibo." 


138 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


preserved  among  the  Jews,  who  called  it  the 
Kherem.  It  consisted  in  promising  to  "  devote  "  to 
Yahveh  this  or  that  city,  if  he  would  deliver  it 
into  their  hands, — a  promise  which  meant  that 
the  city  with  all  its  wealth  should  be  destroyed 
and  all  that  had  life  in  it  should  be  killed — all  in 
honor  and  for  the  glory  of  Yahveh.  The  most 
complete  instance  of  such  a  Kherem,  or  ''  devotion," 
we  have  in  the  command  laid  on  Saul  by  Samuel, 
as  he  sent  him  against  the  Amalekites.  (See  p.io.) 
And  how  strictly  the  fulfilment  of  it  was  demanded 
we  see  from  the  denunciation  hurled  against  him 
for  sparing  the  life  of  the  king  and  the  finest  cattle. 
Knowing  this,  we  can  well  understand  why  Saul's 
plea  that  *'  the  people  spared  the  best  of  the  sheep 
and  of  the  oxen  to  sacrifice  unto  the  Lord,"  availed 
him  naught  before  the  prophet :  what  sense  or 
merit  was  there  in  sacrificing  a  part,  since  the  whole 
was  *' devoted"?  In  Deuteronomy  (xx.  13-14) 
we  find  the  "devotion  "  of  conquered  cities  erected 
into  a  law  and  sacred  precept.  Only,  as  this  book 
was  written  at  a  much  later  time  (about  800  B.C.), 
the  rig-or  of  the  ''  kherem  "  is  somewhat  moderated 
and  the  law  of  death  applies  only  to  the  males  of 
the  population  ;  slavery  and  confiscation  are  the  lot 
of  the  rest.  Here  is  the  entire  passage  :  ""  And  when 
Yahveh  thy  god  delivereth  it  (the  city)  into  thine 
hands,  thou  shalt  smite  every  male  thereof  with  the 
edge  of  the  sword,  but  the  women,  and  the  little 
ones,  and  the  cattle,  and  all  that  is  in  the  city  shalt 
thou  take  as  a  prey  unto  thyself,  and  thou  shalt  eat 
the  spoil  of  thine  enemies  which  the  Lord  God  hath 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN. 


139 


given  thee."  Accordingly  we  continually  come 
across  passages  like  the  following :  ''  If  thou  wilt 
indeed  deliver  this  people  into  my  hand,  then  I  will 
devote  their  cities "  (Numbers,  xxi.  2-3).  "  And 
Yahveh  hearkened  to  the  voice  of  Israel  and  de- 
livered up  the  Canaanites,  and  they  devoted  their 
cities"  (2  Kings,  iii.  27).  So  little  doubt  is  there 
about  the  sense  in  which  the  word  ''devote"  is 
used  in  all  these  passages,  that  the  translators  of 
the  Bible  have  rendered  it  in  the  popular  version 
by  ''utterly  destroy." 

And  now  we  can  at  last  close  this  digression, 
long,  but  most  necessary  for  the  right  comprehen- 
sion not  only  of  the  very  important  group  of  kin- 
dred religions  that  has  been  called  "  Syrian,"  or  of 
Western  Asia,  but  of  that  most  puzzling  and  intri- 
cate side  of  all  ancient  religions  which  bears  on 
what  has  always  been  considered  the  great  Mystery 
of  Sacrifice. 

30.  It  is  a  pity  that  Sanchoniatho  should  be 
neither  so  late  nor  so  authentic  a  writer  as  Bero- 
sus.  He  is  said  to  have  been,  like  the  latter,  a 
priest  of  one  of  the  principal  sanctuaries  in  his  own 
country.  Many  doubt  whether  Sanchoniatho,  as 
an  individual,  really  did  exist,  there  being  no  evi- 
dence thereto  but  a  name  bare  of  all  personal  trait ; 
or  details.  But  what  is  certain  is  that  the  frao- 
ments  preserved  under  that  name  contain  teachings 
handed  down  by  the  priestly  colleges  of  Gebal 
(Greek  Byblos),  a  city  only  second  to  Tyre  and 
Sidon  in  commercial  and  political  greatness,  and 
superior   to   them   in  sanctity.     It   appears  to  have 


140 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


been  a  sort  of  headquarters  of  priestly  lore,  of  re- 
ligious legends  and  observances  and  sacerdotal  au- 
thority. Even  in  their  sadly  imperfect  condition 
they  give  a  very  elaborate  system  of  the  Cosmog- 
ony,^ said  to  be  that  of  the  Phoenician  nations. 
Unfortunately  the  account,  transmitted  in  an  ab- 
breviated yet  intricate  form  by  a  Greek  writer  of 
the  early  Christian  period,  himself  a  Christian,f 
is  so  corrupted  and  inextricably  confused  by  the 
admixture  of  late  Greek  ideas  and  by  most  of  the 
names  being  rendered  into  Greek,  unaccompanied 
by  the  Phoenician  originals,  that  it  is  scarcely  possi- 
ble to  disentangle  the  two  elements.  The  result 
is  very  puzzling.  A  great  deal  has  been  written  on 
the  subject  without  as  yet  producing  much  clear- 
ness. This  is  therefore  not  the  place  where  we  can 
discuss  those  nevertheless  most  valuable  and  inter- 
esting relics,  for  at  the  present  stage  of  our  studies 
we  strive  mainly  to  unravel  and  record  the  genuine, 
original  religious  conceptions  and  traditions  of  the 
several  peoples.  This,  as  already  remarked  (see  p. 
70),  is  especially  difficult  in  dealing  with  the  Phoe- 
nicians and  Canaanitic  nations  generally,  and  there 
is  no  likelihood  of  any  monuments  forthcoming  to 
throw  such  light  on  the  so-called  *'  Sanchoniatho 
fragments "  as  those  of  the  Mesopotamian  states 
shed  on  the  more  authentic  Berosus. 

31.  That  both  the  Cosmogony  of  the  Phoenicians 
and  their  principal  myths  were  nearly  akin  to  those 


*  For  the  meaning  of  the  word  see  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  259  ff. 
t  Eusebius. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN.  i^j 

of  ancient  Chaldea  is  as  certain  as  that  their  art 
was  in  great  part  derived  from  that  of  Babylonia. 
It  is  therefore  without  very  much  surprise  that  we 
meet  with  the  Chaldean  Dumuzi  making  his  home, 
under  the  name  of  AdoniS-Thammuz,  in  the  holi- 
est seat  of  Phoenician  worship,  Gebal.  (''Adonis" 
simply  means  'Mord,  master,"  and  is  identical  with 
the  Hebrew  word  "Adon,"  much  used  by  the 
Hebrews  as  a  title  of  God.)  However  unsympa- 
thetic and  coarse  the  Canaanites'  moral  tendency, 
they  could  not  rob  of  its  poetry  and  pathos  the 
beautiful  story  of  the  lovely  Sun-Youth  tragically 
done  to  death.  He  was  beloved  by  the  goddess 
Baalath  (Greek  Beltis),  the  local  equivalent 
of  Ishtar  and  Ashtoreth,  and  taken  from  her  by  a 
cruel  accident :  *  killed  while  hunting  in  the  forests 
of  Lebanon  by  the  tusk  of  a  fierce  boar,  sent,  ac- 
cording to  some,  by  his  deadly  foe,  Baal-Moloch, 
the  Fiery.  It  was  in  midsummer,  July,  a  month 
sacred  among  the  Semites  to  the  young  slaughtered 
god.  The  river  that  flows  by  Gebal  was  named 
after  him,  Adonis,  and  it  was  said  that  in  his  month 
it  flowed  red  with  his  blood.  This  pretty  conceit 
was  suggested  by  an  actual  fact :  the  springs  of  the 
river  flow  through  certain  red  clay  passes,  which, 
becoming  dry  and  crumbling  in  the  hot  season, 
are  partly  washed  down  by  its  waters.  The  myth- 
ical sense  of  the  story  is  evident.  It  is  the  vic- 
tory of  the  fierce  and  wicked  Sun-god,  the  De- 
stroyer,  over   the   beneficent   Sun,  the   fair  Spring- 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  323-326. 


1^2  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

god,  the  bridegroom  of  Nature  in  her  prime.  Of 
course  he  comes  to  Hfe  again.  His  festival  was 
celebrated  in  early  spring.  It  began  in  mourn- 
ing, with  processions  of  wailing  women,  tearing 
their  hair  and  clothes,  crying  out  that  the  god  was 
dead,  calling  on  his  name  and  repeating,  ''  Ailaiiu  ! 
aihmti  !  "  (*'  Woe  is  us  !  ")  They  laid  a  wooden 
effigy  of  him,  clothed  in  regal  robes,  on  a  bier, 
anointed  it  with  oil  and  performed  over  it  the 
other  rites  for  the  dead,  fasting  severely  all  the 
while.  The  bier  was  carried  in  procession,  followed 
by  an  ever  increasing  crowd,  with  the  usual  extrav- 
agant demonstrations  of  grief.  Then  the  god's 
resurrection  was  celebrated  with  equally  extrava- 
gant rejoicings,  after  the  fashion  of  the  race,  and 
the  air  resounded  with  the  triumphant  cry  of 
''Adonis  is  living,"  instead  of  the  universal  wail^ 
"  Thammuz  is  dead !  "  It  need  scarcely  be  re- 
marked that  this  festival  in  its  double  aspect  was 
of  an  essentially  orgiastic  character.  One  very 
pretty  custom  was  connected  with  it:  that  of  the 
so-called  '*  Adonis-gardens."  It  consisted  in  sowing 
seeds  of  several  garden  herbs  and  early  plants  in 
wooden  boxes,  so  as  to  have  them  green  and  in 
bloom  for  the  festival,  to  greet  the  awakening  of 
the  god,  to  whose  renovated  power  they  moreover 
bore  witness.  These  must  have  been  something 
like  our  window  gardens. 

32.  The  nearest  approach  to  a  moral  conception 
of  the  divine  nature  that  we  can  credit  the  Phoeni- 
cians with  is  the  creation  of  the  divine  group  of  the 
Seven    Kabirim  ("  Mighty  ones").      They  are  no 


THE  RELIGION  OF  CANAAN.  ^a^ 

new  creations.     Melkarth    and    Ashtoreth  were    of 
the  number,  and  it  is  very  probable  that  the  five 
others   were    originally   planetary   powers.      If    so, 
they   underwent    some    transformations,    and    even 
received   names  significant  of   the    moral  qualities 
ascribed   to  them.     One  is '*  the   Orderer,"  and  in- 
vents the  art  of  working  iron ;  another  is  ''  Law." 
And  all  seven  are  said  by  Sanchoniatho  to  be  the 
sons  of  ''  Sydyk,  the  Just,"  or,  as  we  might  perhaps 
render  the  idea,  if  not  literally  the  name,  of  Justice. 
The  most   original  feature  about  this  group  is  the 
addition  to   it   of  an  eighth  Kabir,  higher  still  and 
greater  than  the  rest,  although  called  their  brother. 
His  name  was  ESHMUN,  (the  word  means  simply 
*'  the  Eighth  "),  and  he  was  understood  as  concentrat- 
ing in  himself  the  essence  and  power  of  all  the  others 
— a  desperate  but  lame  effort  towards  monotheism. 
The  Kabirim  represented    the   divine    Intelligence 
and   All-wisdom    in    every  aspect,   and   while    they 
were  the    guardians    of   the   nation's    political   and 
social  organization,  the  inventors  of  the  arts  which 
ensured   its  prosperity,  above   all  of   ship-building, 
navigation  and  the  working  of  iron,  they  were  also 
its  religious  teachers.     The  fragment  of  Sanchonia- 
tho closes  with  the  declaration  :  *'  These  things  the 
Kabirim,  the  seven  sons  of  Sydyk,  and  their  eighth 
brother,    Eshmun,    first    of   all    set    down    in    their 
records  ....  and  they  delivered  them  to  their  suc- 
cessors and  to  foreigners.   .   .   ."     Consequently  the 
Phoenicians  considered   their  sacred  writinc["s  as  re- 
vealed   by  the    Kabirim,    just    as    the    Babylonians 
ascribed  the  revelation  of  their  own  to  their  most 


144 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


ancient  god,  Ea,  the  Cannes  of  Berosus.  These 
"records"  must  have  been  preciously  treasured, 
since  they  had  priestly  colleges,  and  even  a  city 
called  "  the  City  of  Books  "  (Kiriath-Sepher),  and 
it  is  very  strange  that  not  the  least  trace  of  them 
should  have  turned  up. 

33.  It  is  scarcely  needful  to  state  that  wherever 
the  Phoenicians  had  commercial  settlements  or  col- 
onies they  carried  their  gods  and  their  worship. 
This  was  the  case  with  all  the  Greek  and  Italian 
islands,  and  many  portions  of  the  Greek  continent 
also,  especially  along  the  eastern  shore  of  it.  The 
pliant  and  receptive  mind  of  the  Greeks  adopted 
them  in  a  great  measure,  and  amalgamated  them 
with  their  own  beliefs  and  ideas,  bringing  to  bear 
on  them  their  own  poetical  genius,  and  thus  subject- 
ing them  to  a  transformation  which  made  the  old, 
rude,  barbaric  forms  unrecognizable,  except  to  the 
eye  of  practised  scholarship. 


V. 


THE    NEIGHBORS     OF  ASSHUR. — REVIVAL    OF    THE 

EMPIRE. 

1.  The  blank  of  nearly  two  hundred  years  which 
occurs  in  the  monumental  history  of  Assyria  after 
the  brilliant  incident  of  Tiglath-Pileser's  reign  (see 
p.  63),  gave  us  an  opportunity  of  taking  a  long  excur- 
sion to  the  cities  of  the  sea-shore  without  doing  an 
injustice  to  our  master-subject.  When  next  we 
turn  our  eyes  to  the  valley  of  the  Upper  Tigris,  the 
loth  century  B.C.  is  drawing  to  its  close,  the  cloud 
has  lifted  from  Nineveh,  and  the  Assyrian  lion  is 
stronger  and  hungrier  than  ever.  An  uninter- 
rupted line  of  mighty  warrior-kings  now  holds  the 
throne,  perhaps  a  new  dynasty,  with  fresh  ener- 
gies and  a  vigorous  military  organization.  These 
we  can  follow  in  their  succession  and  their  exploits 
with  an  ease  and  certainty  very  refreshing  after  the 
almost  hopeless  gropings  of  early  chronological  re- 
search, thanks  to  a  peculiar  and  very  practical  insti- 
tution of  the  Assyrians,  contrived  by  them  for  the 
express  purpose  of  keeping  up  a  system  of  reliable 
dates. 

2.  It  appears  that,  from  very  remote  times,  it  was 
usual  to  name  each  year  after  one  of  the  great  mag- 
istrates of  the  state.     The  year  was  theu  designated 

10  145 


146 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 


as  the  *'  LiMMU  "  of  So-and-So.  It  is  thought  by 
many  that  the  magistrates  themselves,  in  their 
capacity  of  time-keepers,  had  the  special  title  of 
LiMMU  in  addition  to  the  title  they  held  from  their 
ofifice.  Modern  scholars  have  rendered  the  word  by 
Eponyms.*  This  of^ce  seems  to  have  been  con- 
sidered a  great  distinction,  for  we  find  none  but  the 
highest  dignitaries  invested  w^ith  it.  Every  king  was 
liininu  at  least  once,  generally  the  second  full  year 
of  his  reign.  (The  king  counted  his  regnal  years  not 
from  the  day  of  his  accession,  but  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  next  year;  w'hatever  remained  of  the  old 
year  was  simply  called  *'  the  beginning  of  the  reign.") 
In  his  second  year,  then,  the  king  was  liirnnu  ;  after 
him  came,  in  more  or  less  regular  rotation,  the  tur- 
tan  or  general  of  his  forces,  then  his  chief  minister 
of  state,  then  a  functionary  whom  George  Smith 
supposes  to  have  been  the  head  of  the  priesthood, 
then  an  officer  whom  the  same  scholar  defines  as  a 
sort  of  aide-de-camp  to  the  king ;  after  these  followed 
the  governors  of  provinces  and  important  cities, 
Assyrian  or  conquered.  Of  course  lists  of  the 
eponyms  with  their  respective  years  were  carefully 
kept,  and  the  manner  of  dating  was  something  like 
this  :  ''  Fourth  year  of  Shalmaneser,  liinuiu  So-and 
So  ;  "  or  ''  Second  year  of  Shalmaneser,  liinvm — the 
King."  How  far  back  this  custom  began  we  do  not 
know,  for  the  lists  which  have  been  found  take  us 
only  to  about  900  B.C.  No  less  than  four  copies  of 
limmu  lists  have  been  exhumed,  greatly  injured  and 
even  erased  in  places,  but  the  fragments  fitting  into 

*  See  explanation  of  the  word  in  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  134. 


THE  NEIGIIBOkS  OE  ASSHUR.  \^>j 

each  other  and  completing  one  another  so  beauti- 
fully that,  by  the  simple  expedient  of  writing  them 
out  in  four  parallel  columns,  an  uninterrupted  and 
fully  reliable  scheme  of  reigns  has  been  obtained, 
covering  over  two  hundred  years  (about  900  to  666 
B.C.).  This  is  the  famous  so-called  Assyrian  EPONYM 
Canon,  i.  e.,  ''  authentic  table  of  Eponyms."  A 
further  and  still  greater  help  has  been  derived  from 
the  discovery  of  tables  of  eponyms  with  a  short 
notice  attached  of  the  principal  feature  of  each 
year;  for  instance,  "(Expedition)  to  Babylon,"  or 
''  to  the  land  of  Nairi,"  or  "to  the  land  of  Cedars," 
or  "  In  the  land,"  the  latter  meaning  that  the  king 
had  not  gone  out  of  Assyria  that  year — a  very  un- 
frequent  notice.  An  eclipse  opportunely  mentioned 
in  one  of  these  tables  furnished  the  means  o\  firmly 
locating  the  entire  row  of  dates.  Thi^  result  was 
especially  desirable  for  this  particular  period,  be- 
cause it  is  the  period  when  the  history  of  Assyria 
and  that  of  the  Jews  are  in  constant  collision. 
Almost  every  event  connected  with  Assyria  men- 
tioned in  the  Bible  is  faithfully  recorded  in  the  his- 
torical inscriptions  of  the  Assyrian  kings,  and  the 
Eponym  Canon  enables  us  to  correct  the  somewhat 
loose  chronology  of  the  Jewish  historians,  who  kept 
no  such  yearly  record  and  were  too  much  given  to 
deal  in  averages  and  round  figures  for  perfect  ac- 
curacy. 

3.  When  Assyria  emerged  from  that  long  spell  of 
inactivity  and  obscurity,  and  once  more  stepped 
forth  aggressively  upon  the  stage  of  the  world — her 
world — that  stage  was   greatly  altered.     The  Hittite 


148 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


power,  which  even  in  the  time  of  Tiglath-Pileser  I. 
had  virtually  ceased  to  exist  as  an  independent 
empire, — or,  more  correctly,  as  a  compact  confeder- 
acy,— is  now  altogether  broken  up,  and  though 
Karkhemish  still  retains  considerable  importance,  it 
is  more  as  a  wealthy  station  on  one  of  the  great 
commercial  high-roads  (see  p.  31),  and  as  a  seat  of 
national  worship,  than  as  a  political  centre.  The 
Aramaeans  have  come  to  the  front,  everywhere  sup- 
planting the  Hittites  and  driving  many  of  them, 
north,  towards  the  passes  of  the  Amanus  and  Taurus 
ridges.  Aram  has  become  a  powerful  and  united 
nation,  under  the  rule  of  kings  who  have  established 
their  seat  of  empire  in  Damascus.  (See  p.  56.) 
But  it  is  not  only  the  Aramaeans'  steady  pushing 
from  the  Euphrates  westward  that  has  displaced  or 
overruled  the  ancient  Hittite  power.  They  have 
been  pressed  upon  from  the  south  by  the  Jews,  who 
have  gradually,  in  the  course  of  several  hundred 
years,  occupied  the  lands  around  the  Dead  Sea  and 
along  both  sides  of  the  Jordan,  that  "  land  of 
Canaan  "  which  they  firmly  believed  to  be  their  own 
promised  patrimony  by  right  divine,  and  of  which 
they  took  possession  by  dint  of  stubborn  determina- 
tion and  ruthless  cruelty.  Thus,  although  the  his- 
torical inscriptions  of  this  period  make  frequent 
mention  of  the  "  cities  of  the  Khatti  "  (Hittites), 
the  ''  land  of  the  Khatti,"  the  word  has  become  a 
vague  geographical  designation,  meaning  in  a  gen- 
eral way  the  land  and  cities  of  what  has  later  been 
called  Syria,  the  people  thus  designated  being  as 
often  of  Aramaean  as  of  Hittite  race. 


THE  uVEIGIlBOKS  OF  ASSHUR, 


149 


4,  A  change  has  also  come  over  the  great  trading 
communities  of  the  sea-shore.  The  supremacy  of 
Tyre,  which  had  begun  to  supplant  that  of  Sidon 
among  them,  has  become  more  and  more  confirmed, 
and  the  people  are  no  longer  known,  as  in  the  oldest 
times,  under  the  general  name  of  "  Sidonians." 
The  colonizing  process  is  going  on  more  actively 
than  ever;  only  whereas  the  first  colonies  which 
followed  on  the  exploration  of  the  Greek  seas  and 
islands  were  for  the  most  part  Sidonian,  the  later 
and  more  distant  ones  (see  p.  90  on  Gades  and  Tar- 
shish)  were  sent  out  from  Tyre.  More  and  more 
distant  they  were,  because  the  Greeks  had  ousted 
the  Phoenician  traders  from  their  own  waters,  and 
had,  very  naturally,  established  there  their  own  com- 
merce and  merchant  navy.  More  and  more  fre- 
quently, too,  the  old  hive  sent  out  new  swarms,  be- 
cause more  and  more  closed  in  and  cramped  for 
room  by  the  advance  and  spreading  of  Aram  and 
Israel  in  the  East,  and  in  the  South  of  another 
nation,  the  Pelishtim  (Philistines),  new  comers  of 
a  different  and  probably  European  race.  In  the 
Bible  they  are  said  to  have  come  from  Kaphtor, 
an  island  far  away  in  the  West.  This  is  thought 
to  be  none  other  than  CRETE,  the  largest  and  most 
southern  of  the  Greek  islands,  but  not  with  any 
degree  of  certainty.  It  is  the  more  hopeless  to 
obtain  anything  like  reliable  authority  on  the  origin 
of  this  warlike  people,  so  interesting  from  its  long 
conflict  with  the  Jews,  because  they  appear  to  have 
been  promptly  Semitized,  as  shown  by  their  proper 
names  and  by  their  religion,     We  have  already  seen 


ISO 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


that  they  worshipped  principally  Dagon  and  Atar- 
gatis  (Derketo),  the  Fish-god  and  Fish-goddess. 
(See  p.  1 1 1 ,)  In  one  of  their  cities,  Akkaron,  the  Sun- 
god  was  honored  under  a  peculiar  name  and  aspect, 
that  of  Baal-ZEBUB,  "  the  Lord  of  Flies,"  /.  e.,  the 
*' breeder  of  corruption,"  the  corruption  of  death 
and  decay,  from  which  new  life  springs  in  another 
form.  Still  the  Philistines  are  said  to  have  retained 
many  peculiarities,  and  never  to  have  adopted  cer- 
tain customs  and  ceremonies  very  current  in  the 
Semitic  world.  All  this  would  point  to  a  probabil- 
ity of  their  having  originally  been  a  band  of  foreign 
adventurers,  who  took  possession  of  an  already  set- 
tled and  organized  Semitic  country,  and  established 
there  a  military  royalty  and  aristocracy,  or  ruling 
class.  However  that  may  be,  history  finds  them  as 
a  strong  and  united  confederacy  of  five  principali- 
ties, with  five  capital  cities  :  Gaza,  Ashkalon,  Ash- 
DOD,  Gath  and  Akkaron  (Ekron).  These  are 
''the  five  kings  "  of  the  Philistines  who  kept  Saul 
and  David  so  busy,  and  so  harassed  the  Jewish  farm- 
ers with  their  depredations  that  they  lost  all  cour- 
age to  till  and  to  sow,  knowing  they  would  not  reap, 
and  began  to  hide  in  caverns  and  in  woods. 

5.  But  the  greatest  change  in  the  general  scene- 
shifting  that  had  taken  place  in  the  Semitic  and 
Canaanitic  world  was  that  which  had  converted  a 
few  wandering  tribes  of  the  desert  first  into  a  set- 
tled rural  population  and  holders  of  cities,  with  val- 
iant chieftains  and  princely  ruling  families,  then  into 
a  powerful  kingdom,  organized  after  the  model  of 
the  most  pompous  and  absolute  Oriental  monarch- 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR. 


151 


ies.  Yet  it  was  a  popular  monarchy  too ;  for  it 
arose  out  of  the  struggles  of  the  nation  for  liberty, 
and  the  crown  was  the  reward  of  its  deliverers,  en- 
thusiastically bestowed,  not  begrudged,  nor  bowed 
to  in  servile  abasement.  The  century  that  elapsed 
after  Tiglath-Pileser  I.  (i  100- 1000  B.C.)  saw  the  con- 
flict between  the  Philistines  and  the  Jews  reach  a 
climax  most  disastrous  to  the  latter,  since  they  act- 
ually had  to  suffer  the  presence  of  Philistine  gov- 
ernors within  their  strongest  cities,  and,  according 
to  one,  perhaps  exaggerated,  tradition,  were  forbid- 
den by  their  haughty  oppressors  to  bear  arms  or  ex- 
ercise the  smith's  and  armorer's  craft.  It  was  by 
killing  one  of  these  governors  that  Saul  and  his  son 
Jonathan,  princes  in  the  tribe  of  Benjamin,  began 
their  heroic  and  adventurous  career.  But  not  for 
them  to  taste  were  the  sweets  of  royalty.  Theirs 
the  toil  of  constant  warfare,  not  against  the  Philis- 
tines alone,  but  other  neighboring  peoples  as  well; 
theirs  the  arduous  cares,  the  heavy  responsibilities 
of  national  leadership  in  critical,  dangerous  times, 
theirs  the  bitter  death  of  the  vanquished  on  the 
battle-field.  For  David,  the  chosen  of  Judah,  the 
royal  outlaw  and  freebooter,  it  was  reserved  to  wear 
in  peace  and  prosperity  the  crown  which  had  had 
naught  but  thorns  for  Saul,  which  he  had  volunta- 
rily laid  down  with  his  life  in  weariness  and  hope- 
lessness of  spirit.  To  David  it  was  given  to  accom- 
plish the  task  of  deliverance,  and  to  unite  the  scat- 
tered forces  of  a  people,  conscious  indeed  of  its 
unity  of  race,  but  politically  inefficient  from  being 


J  52 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


broken  up  into  many  independent  communities — 
the  tribes.  Tliis  he  achieved  by  girding  the  land 
around  with  fortresses,  by  substituting  a  standing 
organized  army  for  the  temporary,  irregular  arma- 
ments, always  eager  to  disperse  again,  of  the  time 
of  the  Judges,  and  a  central  government  for  the  old 
patriarchal  rule  of  the  councils  of  elders.  These 
changes  he  most  effectually  achieved  by  building 
himself  a  royal  city  on  a  well  situated  hill,  JERUSA- 
LEM, and  especially  by  setting  up  his  own  royal 
sanctuary  as  the  only  holy  place  of  the  nation. 

6.  For  hitherto  there  had  been  many  holy  places 
of  worship  and  pilgrimage,  and  to  each  had  offerings 
flowed  unceasingly,  and  some  were  held  peculiarly 
sacred  by  one  tribe,  some  by  another.  Also,  mon- 
otheism, though  professed  in  theory,  was  as  yet 
far  from  being  consistently  conformed  to  in  practice. 
Even  idolatry  was  not  yet  strictly  abolished  ;  it  was, 
by  the  Bible's  own  showing,  at  least  tolerated. 
Private  men,  if  wealthy  and  influential,  could  have 
chapels  or  sanctuaries  of  their  ov;n,  dedicated  of 
course  to  Yahveh,  not  to  any  of  the  foreign  Baals 
— "  abominations,"  as  they  were  popularly  spoken 
of — and  maintain  priests  of  their  own  to  minis- 
ter at  their  altars ;  and  it  must  have  been  by  no 
means  unusual  to  enshrine  in  them  idols,  meant  as 
images    of    Yahveh.*     The    establishment    of    the 


*  See  Judges,  viii.  24-28  (story  of  Gideon) ;  xvii.  and  xviii.  (story 
of  Micah,  his  teraphim  and  his  priest) ;  i  Samuel,  xix.  10-17  (story 
of  David's  escape). 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR. 


153 


royal  sanctuary  for  the  enthronement  of  the  great 
national  shrine,  the  Ark,  in  Jerusalem,  was  not  only 
a  necessary  religious  move  in  the  right  direction, 
but  also  a  wise  and  deep-laid  political  measure. 
Nothing  keeps  communities  so  enduringly  apart, 
even  when  professing  a  common  faith,  as  separate 
sanctuaries ;  nothing  more  quickly  and  solidly 
cements  them  into  one  nation  than  a  common 
sanctuary.  People  whose  best  feelings,  highest 
thoughts,  and  most  sacred  hopes  tend  towards  one 
centre,  meeting  and  blendiilg  there  on  common 
ground,  weaned  for  the  time  from  worldly  rivalries 
and  animosities,  cannot  but  become  enclosed  in  a 
strong  bond  of  brotherhood  and  good-will.  When 
David's  son  and  successor,  Solomon,  built  the 
temple  on  Mount  Moriah,  and  it  was  proclaimed 
the  only  high  place  at  which  it  was  lawful  for 
Yahveh's  people  to  pray  and  sacrifice,  the  seal  was 
set  on  the  work  begun  by  his  father,  a  work  which 
endured  through  all  ages  down  to  our  own  day. 
But  for  that  command,  and  but  for  that  memory, 
the  Jews  might  in  after  times,  like  all  conquered 
people,  have  amalgamated  with  the  conquerors  and 
lost  their  political  consciousness.  As  it  is,  that 
memory  and  that  command,  which  they  consider  as 
binding  even  yet,  have  kept  them  apart  from  all  the 
nations  among  which  they  have  been  scattered,  so 
that  dwellers  in  many  lands  as  they  have  been  and 
are  now,  they  still  keep  together  morally,  all  dis- 
tances notwithstanding,  and  consider  themselves 
emphatically  a  separate  nation. 


154 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


7.  The  reign  of  Solomon  (middle  of  tenth  cent- 
ury B.C.)  represents  the  climax  of  splen- 
and° Hiram  ^^^  ^^"'^  power  reached  by  Hebrew  roy- 
middfe  of  ^^^7'  ^^  ^^  the  ideal  of  the  peculiar  kind 
urTB.C?*"  of  I'uler  that  may  be  called  the  Oriental 
despot  of  the  grand  type,  with  its  strange 
mixture  of  large  qualities  and  vainglorious  love  of 
display,  of  wisdom  and  cruelty.  His  passion  for 
building,  the  scale  on  which  he  indulged  it,  and  the 
manner,  remind  one  of  the  Babylonian  and 
Assyrian  monarchs.  Pressed  gangs  of  laborers 
— '*  strangers  that  were  in  the  land  of  Israel  " — 
worked  under  thousands  of  overseers ;  70,000  as 
*'  bearers  of  burdens,"  80,000  as  "  hewers  in  the 
mountains,"  besides  which  a  levy  of  30,000  men  was 
sent  into  Lebanon  to  cut  cedars  and  break  stone  ; 
and  the  burdens  which  he  laid  on  his  people  were 
very  heavy,  as  they  needs  must  have  been  to  meet 
the  outlay.  For  he  had  more  to  defray  than  the 
actual  expense  of  building:  he  had  to  get  foreign 
artists  to  decorate  his  constructions,  the  Jews  having 
been  refused  by  nature  the  inventive  faculty  in  the 
arts,  with  the  exception  of  music  and  poetry.  He 
applied  to  his  ally,  Hiram,  king  of  Tyre—''  for  Hi- 
ram was  ever  a  lover  of  David  " — to  send  him  artists 
and  skilled  workmen  to  teach  his  own  people,  and 
do  the  finest  work  themselves,  engaging  to  maintain 
them  at  his  own  cost.  Hiram  did  all  that  he  was 
asked,  furnished  the  cedar  and  fir-trees,  and  even 
supplied  his  friend  with  loans  in  gold,  "  according  to 
all  his  desire."  For  which,  after  twenty  years,  when 
all  the  building  was  done,  both  "  the  house  of  Yah- 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR. 


155 


veh"  and  ''  the  king's  own  house  "  (the  former  tak- 
ing seven  years  and  the  latter  thirteen),  Solomon,  un- 
able after  so  great  a  strain  on  his  finances  to  pay  in 
money,  was  fain  to  give  up  to  his  royal  creditor 
twenty  cities  near  their  mutual  boundaries.  It  is  a 
great  misfortune  for  the  history  of  art  that  Solo- 
mon's   constructions    should   have  been    so   utterly 


21. — GROUP  OF  CEDARS  IN  LEBANON. 

destroyed,  for  the  detailed  description  preserved 
in  the  Bible  (i  Kings,  vi.,  vii.;  I  Chronicles,  iii., 
iv.)  is  somewhat  confusing  and  very  difficult  to  im- 
aeine  without  something  to  illustrate  it,  and  these 
two  buildings  must  have  been  masterpieces  of  that 
Phoenician  art  which  we  know  to  have  been  bor- 
rowed in  about  equal  parts  from  Babylon  and  from 
Egypt,  and  to  have  been  very  perfect  in  its  work- 
manship, but  of  which  so  little  is  left  for  us  to 
judge  by. 


156 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


8.  In  thorough,  far-seeing  statesmanship  Solo- 
mon was  probably  inferior  to  his  father,  David. 
His  policy  was  to  make  friends  far  and  near,  and  to 
secure  himself  a  peaceful  reign,  and,  though  he  suc- 
ceeded very  fairly,  yet  the  result  was  neither  so 
complete  nor  so  lasting  as  he  surely  wished  it  to  be. 
He  strove  to  accomplish  his  plans  after  a  character- 
istically Oriental  fashion  :  by  numerous  marriages 
with  daughters  of  all  the  surrounding  princes.  His 
chief  queen  was  an  Egyptian  princess,  for  whom  he 
built  a  separate  palace  near  his  own.  His  harem 
became  unusually  extensive  even  for  an  Oriental  sov- 
ereign, for  whom,  according  to  Oriental  notions,  a 
numerous  harem  is  a  necessary  and  seemly  mark  of 
royal  state,  and  contained  princesses  of  the  Sido- 
nians  and  the  Hittites,  of  the  Moabites,  Ammonites, 
Edomites — of  all  the  nations  with  whom  Israel  had 
waged  war.  From  this  he  was  led  to  build  "  high 
places"  to  foreign  gods:  ''And  so  did  he  for  all 
his  strange  wives,  which  burned  incense  and  sacri- 
ficed unto  their  gods."  But  it  certainly  was  done 
quite  as  much  for  the  sake  of  conciliating  his 
wives'  families  and  countrymen,  and  foster  in- 
ternational intercourse  and  commerce,  for  Jerusa- 
lem quickly  became  a  notable  mart  of  trade.  Of 
this  condescension,  though  apparently  dictated  by 
sound  policy,  the  effects  were  disastrous,  for  the 
friendship  was  not  maintained  a  moment  longer 
than  convenient  to  all  parties,  while  the  Jews'  in- 
domitable hankering  after  the  worships  of  their 
Semitic  and  Canaanitic  neighbors  was  fatally  en- 
couraged, and  Jerusalem  became  the  headquarters 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR,  i  5  j 

of  the  very  abominations  which  her  founders  so 
strongly  deprecated  and  denounced.  And  the 
yoke  which  Solomon  had  laid  on  a  people  hitherto 
independent  and  masterful  had  been  so  exceeding 
heavy  that  the  sinews  that  had  borne  it  relaxed  the 
moment  his  hand  was  taken  from  their  necks  by 
death  ;  and  when  his  son  refused  in  insulting  lan- 
guage to  lighten  their  burdens,  the  war-cry  was 
raised  :  "  To  your  tents,  O  Israel !  "  and  ten  tribes 
seceded  from  the  house  of  David,  choosing  a  king 
for  themselves,  and  only  Judah  followed  David's 
grandson  and  his  sons  after  him.  Henceforth,  then, 
there  were  two  kingdoms,  that  of  Israel  and  that 
of  Judah.  Revolts,  palace  revolutions  and  violent 
changes  of  dynasties  were  of  frequent  occurrence  in 
the  former,  while  the  house  of  David  reigned  in  the 
latter  to  the  end,  son  after  father,  uninterruptedly. 
The  mutual  attitude  of  the  two  kingdoms  was  gen- 
erally hostile,  often  bursting  into  open  war.  This 
afforded  a  welcome  chance  of  aggrandizement  to  the 
new  monarchy  of  Damascus,  which  followed  the 
simple  and  practical  policy  of  playing  one  off  against 
the  other,  and  to  all  the  older  enemies  of  Israel, 
especially  Moab,  who  at  this  period  became  ex- 
tremely ambitious  and  aggressive,  displaying  qual- 
ities which  are  concisely  hit  off  in  a  couple  of  lines 
of  the  prophet  Isaiah  :  "  We  have  heard  of  the 
pride  of  Moab,  that  he  is  very  proud  ;  even  of  his 
arrogancy,  and  his  pride  and  his  wrath." 

9.  If,  as  has  been  thought  likely,  the  temporary 
abasement  of  Assyria,  of  which  the  causes  are  un- 


I  -  s  THE  STOR  Y  OF  ASS YRIA. 

known,  was  indirectly  brought  about,  or  at  least 
assisted,  by  the  aggrandizement  of  so  many  neigh- 
bors on  whom  Tiglath-Pileser  would  have  looked 
down  with  contemptuous  wonder  had  he  been  made 
aware  of  their  humble  beginnings,  it  is  also  not  im- 
probable that  the  splitting  of  the  Jewish  monarchy 
and  the  dissensions  that  were  rife  between  all  these 
restless  and  jealous  nations  may  have  in  some  de- 
gree favored  the  resumption  by  his  remote  succes- 
sors of  his  conquering  career.  ''The  people  shall 
be  oppressed,"  says  the  prophet,  "  every  one  by 
another,  and  everyone  by  his  neighbor";  and,  lo! 
Asshur  stands  before  them,  and  "  it  is  in  his  heart 
to  destroy,  and  to  cut  off  nations  not  a  few." 
(Isaiah,  vii.  2  ;  x.  7.) 

10.  Yet  it  is  not  west  of  the  Euphrates  but  in 
the  North  that  we  once  more  catch  a  distinct  view 
of  the  Assyrian  warrior-kings,  in  that  mysterious 
mountain  region  of  Nairi,  of  which  the  exact  extent 
and  boundaries  have  never  been  determined,  but 
which  clearly  formed  the  bulwark  beyond  which  no 
branch  of  the  Semitic  race  ever  established  a  home 
or  political  dominion.  TUKULTI-NlNEB  II.,  the 
third  of  the  new  series  of  kings,  about  the  middle  of 
the  tenth  century  B.C.,  is  recorded  by  his  son  as 
having  placed  a  stele  with  his  own  effigy  by  one  of 
the  sources  of  the  Tigris,  alongside  of  that  of  Tig- 
lath-Pileser I.  But  it  was  that  son,  ASSHURNA- 
ZIRPAL,  who  fully  revived  the  ancient  splendor  of 
Assyria  and  greatly  added  thereto,  both  by  his 
deeds  of  war  and  by  his  works  of  peace. 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR. 


159 


II.  "I  am  the  king,  the  lord,  the  exalted,  the 
strong,    the    revered,    the    gigantic,    the     first,    the 

mighty,  the  doughty,  a  hon  and  a  hero — 
Asshiirna-  Asshurnazirpal,  the  powerful  king,  the 
884-860       kinnr   of    Assliur."     Thus    he    announces 

himself  in  the  long  inscription  which  has 
been  called  his  "  Annals,"  and  goes  on  for  many 
lines  glorifying  himself  as  a  ''  resistless  weapon," 
a  ''destroyer  of  cities,"  a  "  treader  down  of  foes," 
etc.,  etc.,  before  he  enters  on  the  narrative  of  his 
campaigns.  The  first  one  was  directed  into  that 
same  indomitable  land  of  Nairi,  which  appears 
to  have  taken  up  a  good  third  of  the  Assyrian 
king's  energies  and  time,  almost  leading  one  to  sus- 
pect that  their  frequent  expeditions  into  it  were  a 
matter  of  self-defence  even  more  than  of  conquest. 
It  is  very  possible  that  those  mountaineers  would, 
after  the  fashion  of  highland  tribes  in  all  countries 
and  ages,  have  harassed  their  great  neighbor  by 
perpetual  inroads  and  depredations  had  they  not 
been  kept  in  constant  fear  of  an  invasion.  As  it  is, 
they  are  continually  said  to  have  "  rebelled,"  and 
thus  called  down  on  themselves  dire  coercion. 
Asshurnazirpal  repeatedly  boasts  that  in  this  his 
first  campaign  he  "  advanced  w^hither  none  of  his 
royal  ancestors  had  arrived,"  to  a  mountain  which 
pierced  the  sky  "  like  the  point  of  a  dagger,"  to 
which  "not  even  the  birds  of  heaven  find  access," 
and  that  the  people  who  had  built  a  stronghold 
there  "like  an  eagle's  eyrie  "  he  threw  down  from 
the  mountain,  having  ''  climbed  it  on  his  own  feet  " 
and  ''  dyed   the    mountains   with    their   blood    like 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR.  i6i 

wool."  This  particular  fastness,  however,  cannot 
have  been  very  populous,  since  the  massacre  *'  laid 
low  "  only  two  hundred  warriors.  The  king  had  his 
own  likeness  hewn  in  the  rock,  in  the  same  cave  by 
the  source  of  the  Tigris  as  that  of  Tiglath-Pileser 
and  Tukulti-Nineb,  and  it  was  found  there  by  Mr. 
Taylor  with  the  former ;  the  second  was  destroyed 
in  some  way,  perhaps,  it  has  been  suggested,  by  the 
falling  in  of  the  cave.  So  Asshurnazirpal,  notwith- 
standing his  boast,  can  -scarcely  have  gone  much 
further  than  his  predecessors,  or  he  would  not  have 
failed  to  place  his  likeness  at  the  uttermost  point 
he  reached. 

12.  One  wishes  there  might  have  been  as  much 
exaeeeration  in  the  recitals  of  the  unheard-of 
cruelties  which  he  details  with  a  vaunting  compla- 
cency that  makes  one  shudder  even  more  than 
the  acts  themselves,  unfortunately  common  enough 
in  Eastern  warfare,  not  in  antiquity  alone.  A 
few  specimens  from  this  first  campaign  will  more 
than  suffice  to  illustrate  the  revolting  character  of 
the  narrative.  After  taking  another  stronghold 
which  **  hung  like  a  cloud  on  the  sky,"  he  built  a 
pyramid  of  the  heads  of  its  slain  defenders.  The 
*'  prince  of  the  city"  he  took  home  with  him  to  his 
city  of  Arbela,  and  there  flayed  him  alive  and 
spread  out  his  skin  on  the  city  wall.  Another 
chieftain,  ''the  son  of  a  nobody,"  i.  e.^  not  of 
princely  lineage,  met  the  same  fate  at  Nineveh 
after  having  witnessed  the  slaughter  of  his  compan- 
ions :  "  I  erected  a  pillar  opposite  the  gate  of  his 
city,"  says  the  king ;  "  the  nobles,  as  many  as  had 


1 62 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


rebelled,  I  flayed  and  dressed  the  pillar  in  their 
skins;  some  I  walled  up  inside  the  pillar;  others  I 
impaled  on  stakes  planted  on  top  of  the  pillar ; 
others  again  I  had  impaled  on  stakes  all  around  the 
pillar.  .  .  ."  He  seems  to  have  been  in  the  habit 
of  cutting  off  prisoners'  hands  and  feet,  noses  and 
ears,  and  making  piles  of  them,  putting  out  captives' 


V    .  "2i        -^     X  w 

,  '.>.  -.^-  ^ 

>     '"^  If':, 4  ■^_  i 

\  If,  ^ .  -^ '  — ■flt' 

'~"^,'''    '-■'^^^, 

-^^  ^,  -^^     jL 

-*-"    '^J.^i^-.i) 

?    _*->•  i^^  X  ^  ■'"u^  W 

'^5^^^-^.  -  -^ 

C--^^^^         —  ;^'i:^_=J 

— s;.^^        .-,    -      ^J 

'^^aswr  -"^ 

\f»t3j<(*0!^ 

23. — COUNTING   AND    PILING    UP   HEADS   OF   CAPTIVES. 

eyes,  burning  boys  and  girls  in  the  fire.  The  only 
respite  from  these  horrors  is  the  long  dry  catalogues 
of  booty,  tribute  and  presents.  On  the  whole,  this 
document  is  more  tedious  and  repulsive  than  most 
others  of  the  same  kind.  The  narrative  gains  but 
slightly  in  interest  when  it  takes  us  (ninth  cam- 
paign) into  the  "  land  of  the  Khatti "  (Syria),  to  the 
skirts  of  Lebanon  and  the  sea-shore  :  "  In  those  days 
I  occupied  the  environs  of  Lebanon  ;  to  the  great 


^  -  ■ .  ^    *•  • 


'  ^M  0^  i~ -^jli'/ h  V  vJ7  ^:  V  ^;:'^-;;5  ^ 


163 


164 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


sea  of  Phoenicia  I  went  up  ;  up  to  the  great  sea  my 
arms  I  carried  ;  to  the  gods  I  sacrificed,  I  took 
tribute  of  the  princes  of  the  sea-coast."  Tyre, 
Sidon,  Gebal,  Arvad,  are  among  the  names,  and 
thus  the  great  merchant-people  once  again  pur- 
chased safety  with  wealth — silver,  gold,  tin,  copper, 
woollen  and  linen  garments,  etc.,  also  *'  strong  tim- 
ber," of  which  the  king  stood  much  in  need  for  his 
numerous  constructions,  and  of  which  he  next  in- 
forms us  that  he  cut  much  for  himself  in  the 
Amanos  Mountains. 

13.  Ten  campaigns  in  six  years  carried  on  in  this 
vigorous  spirit  secured  submission  for  a  time,  and 
gave  the  king  leisure  to  attend  to  matters  at  home. 
The  North  was  quelled,  Assyria's  dominion  in  the 
West  materially  enlarged,  and  successful  expeditions 
in  the  South-east  and  South  kept  Kar-Dunyash  and 
the  hill  tribes  of  the  southern  Zagros  in  a  respectful 
attitude,  so  that  during  the  remaining  fifteen  years 
of  this  reign  we  hear  of  but  one  more  campaign,  to 
the  North  again,  where,  notwithstanding  the  250 
towns  taken  and  destroyed,  resistance  never  died 
out.  This  long  interval  of  quiet  Asshurnazirpal 
mainly  devoted  to  rebuilding  and  adorning  his  city 
of  Kalah,  formerly  founded  by  Shalmaneser  I.  and 
since  somehow  destroyed  or  fallen  into  decay, 
which  he  now  chose  for  his  favorite  residence  and 
the  second  capital  of  the  Empire.  He  employed  on 
the  gigantic  works  all  the  captives  he  had  brought 
from  "the  other  side  of  the  Euphrates,"  and  what 
those  works  were  Layard's   labors  on  the  Nimrud 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR. 


165 


Mound  have  shown  to  our  astonished  age.*  It  is 
the  so-called  "  North-west  Palace  "  which  was  As- 
shurnazirpal's  own,  flanked  by  the  temple  of  Nineb, 
his  favorite  deity,  and  the  Ziggurat  belonging  there- 
to, now  marked  by  that  pyramidal  mound  which 
forms  the  most  conspicuous  feature  of  the  Nimrud 
landscape.  He  constructed  an  important  canal, 
meant  not  only  to  supply  the  city  with  pure  moun- 
tain water  more  directly  than  it  could  be  supplied 
by  the  Zab  and  its  affluents,  but  also  to  be  distrib- 
uted over  the  surrounding  fields  by  means  of  dams 
and  sluices.  It  is  the  only  Assyrian  work  of  the 
kind  sufficient  traces  of  which  have  been  preserved 
to  make  us  understand  the  principle  on  which  it 
was  carried  out.  The  new  capital  must  have  grown 
with  magic  rapidity.  In  Mr.  George  Rawlinson's 
lively  and  picturesque  words :  ^'  Palace  after  palace 
rose  on  its  lofty  platform  rich  with  carved  wood- 
work, gilding,  painting,  sculpture  and  enamel,  each 
aiming  to  outshine  its  predecessors,  Avhile  stone 
lions,  obelisks,  shrines  and  temple-towers  embel- 
lished the  scene,  breaking  its  monotonous  sameness 
by  variety.  The  lofty  Ziggurat  dominating  over  the 
whole  gave  unity  to  the  vast  mass  of  palatial  and 
sacred  edifices.  The  Tigris,  skirting  the  entire 
western  base  of  the  mound,  glassed  it  in  its  waves, 
and  doubling  the  apparent  height,  rendered  less 
observable  the  chief  weakness  of  the  architecture. 
When  the  setting  sun  lighted  up  the  whole  with  the 
gorgeous    hues    seen    only   under   an    Eastern   sky, 

*  Sea  ''  Story  of  Chaldea,"  Introduction,  Ch.  I.-III. 


1 66  I^^E  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

Kalah  must  have  seemed  to  the  traveller  who  be- 
held it  for  the  first  time  like  a  vision  from  fairy- 
land." ^ 

14.  Of  the  historical  slab-sculptures  with  which 
Asshurnazirpal's  palace  is  decorated  throughout, 
specimens  are  given  in  the  illustrations  presented 
in  this  chapter.  When  first  discovered,  they  were 
a  revelation  concerning  the  luxury  and  refinement 
which  the  Assyrians  had  attained  in  their  costumes, 
military  equipments,  and  other  belongings.  Here 
again  Mr.  George  Rawlinson  will  permit  us  to  bor- 
row a  page  from  him  ;  it  is  forcible,  and  exactly  to 
the  point : 

"  What  chiefly  surprises  us  in  regard  to  them  (the  sculptures)  is 
the  suddenness  with  which  the  art  they  manifest  appears  to  have 
sprung  up,  without  going  through  the  usual  stages  of  rudeness  and 
imperfection.  Setting  aside  one  mutilated  statue  of  very  poor  execu- 
tion and  a  single  rock-tablet  "  (the  often  mentioned  one  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser),  *'  we  have  no  specimens  remaining  of  Assyrian  mimetic  art 
more  ancient  than  this  monarch.  (Some  signet  cylinders  of  Assyrian 
workmanship  may  be  older,  but  their  date  is  uncertain).  .  .  .  Asshur- 
nazirpal  had  undoubtedly  some  constructions  of  former  monarchs  to 
copy  from,  both  in  his  palatial  and  his  sacred  edifices ;  the  old  pal- 
aces  and  temples  at  Kileh-Sherghat  (Asshur)  must  have  had  a  certain 
grandeur,  and  in  his  architecture  this  monarch  may  have  merely 
amplified  and  improved  upon  the  models  left  him  by  his  predeces- 
sors; but  his  ornamentation,  so  far  as  appears,  was  his  own.  The 
mounds  of  Kileh-Sherghat  have  yielded  bricks  in  abundance,  but  not 
a  single  fragment  of  sculptured  slab.  We  cannot  prove  that  orna- 
mental bas-reliefs  did  not  exist  before  the  time  of  Asshurnazirpal  ; 
indeed,  the  rock-tablets  which  earlier  monarchs  set  up  were  sculpt- 
ures of  this  character ;  but  to  Asshurnazirpal  seems  at  any  rate  to 
belong  the  merit  of  having  first  adopted  bas-reliefs  on  an  extensive 
scale  as  an  architectural  ornament,  and  of  having  employed  them  so 
as  to  represent  by  their  means  all  the  public  life  of  the  monarch.  .  .  . 


*  "  Five  Monarchies,"  Vol.  II.,  pp.  356-357. 


Q 


H-i 
I 


I 


ir 
M 


167 


1 5g  THE  S  TOR  Y  OF  ASS  YRtA . 

* 

" .  .  .  .  The  evidence  of  the  sculptures  alone  is  quite  sufficient  to 
show  that  the  Assyrians  were  already  a  great  and  luxurious  people ; 
that  most  of  the  useful  arts  not  only  existed  among  them,  but  were 
cultivated  to  a  high  pitch  ;  and  that  in  dress,  furniture,  jewellery,  etc., 
they  were  not  very  much  behind  the  moderns."* 

15.  Of  these  sculptures  perhaps  the  most  remark- 
able in  point  of  artistic  beauty  are  the  representa- 
tions of  the  royal  hunts.  They  are  most  spirited  in 
composition,  perfect  in  detail,  and  the  animals  are 
treated  with  a  boldness  and  truth  to  nature  which 
makes  them,  in  variety  of  attitude  and  finish  of 
form,  much  superior  to  the  conventional  rendering 
of  human  figures,  with  their  exaggerated  play  of 
muscle,  eternal  profile-turn,  and  sameness  of  motion. 
Nothing  but  long  and  loving  observation  of  nature 
could  have  produced  such  results,  and  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  the  artists  accompanied  the  king 
for  the  express  purpose  of  witnessing  his  prowess 
and  taking  studies  on  the  spot.  The  passion  of  the 
chase  was  a  distinctive  taste  of  the  Assyrian  kings, 
and  they  attached  as  much  importance  to  their 
hunting  exploits  as  to  their  warlike  deeds,  and  were 
quite  as  anxious  to  have  them  portrayed  for  the 
benefit  of  posterity.  Lions  and  wild  bulls  seem  to 
have  been  Asshurnazirpal's  favorite  game, — prob- 
ably the  most  plentiful,  so  that  the  royal  amuse- 
ment must  have  been  a  public  benefit  as  well.  The 
king  is  always  represented  as  engaging  his  lion 
single-handed,  either  on  foot  or  from  his  chariot ; 
one  or  more  attendants,  it  is  true,  are  close  behind, 

*  "  Five  Monarchies,"  Vol.  II.,  pp.  351-353. 


THE  NEIGHLWRS  OF  ASSHUR. 


169 


but  inactive,  and,  so  to  speak,  respectfully  observant, 
ready  with  a  reserve  of  spears  or  arrows.  One  can 
easily  imagine  that  it  must  haVe  been  as  much  as 
their  life  was  worth  to  interfere  with  the  master's 
sport  unbidden,  or  before  imminent  danger  threat- 
ened his  sacred  person.  Asshurnazirpal  is  as  partic- 
ular as  Tiglath-Pileser  in  recording  his  most  nota- 


26.— LION    IN    ROYAL   PALACE,  LET   OUT   OF   CAGE  TO  BE  HUNTED. 
(palace  of  ASSHURBANIPAL.) 

ble  hunts,  the  number  of  animals  killed  or  captured 
by  him,  for  he  too  used  to  keep  menageries  at  home, 
or,  more  probably,  parks  sufiFiciently  vast  to  hunt  in, 
for  which  purpose  lions,  kept  in  cages,  would  be  let 
out.  But  perhaps  this  was  done  only  by  later  kino-s, 
when  the  lordly  game  had  become  scarce.  (See  illus- 
tration No.  26.)     A  successful  hunt  was  an  occasion 


Xyo  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

for  thanksgiving  as  well  as  a  victory,  and  we  have 
several  scenes  representing  the  monarch  in  the  act 
of  pouring  a  drink-offering  over  dead  lions  or  wild 
bulls,  dutifully  laid,  with  limbs  composed  in  seemly 
posture,  as  of  rest,  at  the  foot  of  the  altar.  (See 
ill.  27.) 

16.  In  this  king's  ''  Annals  "  there  occurs  this 
phrase :  "  The  fear  of  my  dominion  reached  unto 
Karduniash  ;  the  progress  of  my  arms  filled  the 
Land  Kaldu  with  terror."  ''  Kaldu  "  is  our 
*'  Chaldea,"  and  it  is  a  somewhat  startling  fact  that 
this  is  the  very  first  time  the  name  appears  on  any 
monument,  either  Babylonian  or  Assyrian,  and  in  a 
way  which  expressly  separates  it  from  Kardunyash 
or  Babylonia  proper.  We  are  forced  to  admit  that 
the  name  as  we  use  it,  embracing  the  whole  of 
Lower  Mesopotamia  as  distinguished  from  Assyria, 
is,  strictly  speaking,  a  misnomer.  It  is  neither  so 
ancient  nor  so  comprehensive.  It  applies  legiti- 
mately only  to  the  lowlands  around  the  Gulf  and 
their  population  ;  in  this  sense  it  is  continually  used 
from  this  time  forth  and  contrasted,  not  confounded, 
with  Babylon  with  its  particular  district,  the  land  of 
Accad,  and  the  north  of  Shumir  with  its  great  cities. 
It  is  necessary  to  know  this  in  order  to  secure  a 
more  accurate  understanding  of  the  later  revolu- 
tions in  w^hich  the  Chaldeans,  in  this  restricted  sense, 
play  a  principal  part.  Yet  the  word  will  probably 
continue  to  be  used  in  its  wider  and  improper  ac- 
ceptation. There  is  nothing  more  difficult  to  cor- 
rect than  a  form  of  speech  originating  in  insufficient 
knowledge,   but    sanctioned   by   long    use.      Thus 


25 

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J. 

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172  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

every  child  nowadays  knows  that  the  sun  neither 
*'  rises  "  nor  "  sets,"  yet  no  one  expects  **  sunset  " 
and  ''sunrise"  to  be  discarded  from  our  vocabu- 
laries. 

17.  The  Chaldeans  proper,  then,  were  the  people 
of  the  lowlands  by  the  Gulf,  divided  into  a  num- 
ber of  small  principalities,  i.  r.,  of  tribes  very  patri- 
archally  governed  by  their  own  chieftains,  who  am- 
bitiously called  themselves  *'  kings,"  and  probably 
were  originally  the  heads  of  families  which  had 
grown  into  powerful  clans  or  tribes.  This  seems 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  each  such  principality  was 

called    "the    house    of    So-and-so,"— '' Bit " 

By  all  accounts  the  most  important  was  that 
founded  by  Yakin — Bit-Yakin.  The  princes  of 
this  "  house  "  exceeded  the  others  in  wealth  and  in- 
fluence, and  when  the  time  came  for  the  great  na- 
tional rising,  which  was  slowly  preparing,  they  nat- 
urally assumed  the  part  of  leaders.  It  is  not  clear 
when  these  tribes  began  to  gather  strength  and  to 
form  a  political  body,  but  it  does  not  seem  improb- 
able that  the  movement  may  have  begun  some- 
where in  the  tenth  century,  during  the  period  of 
Assyria's  abasement  and  obscurity.  From  the  mo- 
ment they  do  appear,  they  are  Assyria's  uncom- 
promising foes, — hardened  rebels,  from  her  point  of 
view,  always  spoken  of  wMth  a  bitter  rancor,  beto- 
kening some  degree  of  respect  and  fear.  Not  so 
with  Babylon,  the  relations  to  which,  if  not  always 
smooth  and  peaceable,  were,  on  the  whole,  patron- 
izingly neighborly.  The  kings  of  Babylon  are  un- 
mistakably vassals  of   Nineveh  ;    as  such  they  are 


THE  NEIGHBORS  OF  ASSHUR. 


173 


chastised  when  refractory,  but  received  into  favor 
aeain  the  moment  they  send  in  their  tribute  and 
submission.  The  Assyrian  kings  sacrifice  in  state 
at  the  ereat  sanctuaries — to  them  also  national  ones, 
— at  Babylon,  Borsip,  Sippar,  Kutha,  and  they 
esteem  it  a  favor  of  the  "  great  gods  "  to  be  per- 
mitted to  do  so.  It  is  like  going  on  pilgrimages. 
It  has  been  suggested  that  Babylon  and  the  other 
great  cities  had  become,  in  a  great  measure,  re- 
signed to  a  rule,  which,  after  all,  could  not  exactly 
be  called  a  foreign  one,  since  there  was  the  bond  of 
race  and  religion  to  take  the  greatest  odium  from  it, 
while  the  people  of  the  lowlands  and  the  sea-coast 
had  maintained  a  feeling  of  independence  which 
kept  them  stubbornly  on  the  defensive,  until  the 
moment  when  they  should  be  able  to  assert  them- 
selves aggressively.  When  we  remember  that  the 
ancient  culture  of  Shumir  and  Accad  had  its  oldest 
seats  in  this  very  region,  and  thence  spread  gradu- 
ally northward,  it  does  not  seem  improbable  that 
this  sea-coast  population  should  have  more  partic- 
ularly belonged  to  the  older  Turanian  stock  of  the 
mixed  and  much  stratified  nation,  and  treasured  the 
consciousness  of  an  older  and  purer  race,  as  well  as 
the  traditions  of  immemorial  national  greatness,  to- 
gether with  an  ardent  and  inspiriting  longing  to  re- 
store that  race  to  independence  and,  indeed,  to  sov- 
ereignty. They  developed  great  qualities  in  the  con- 
flict on  which  they  entered  perhaps  imprudently, 
but  which  they  carried  on  against  all  odds  through 
two  centuries  and  more.  When  the  prophet  Hab- 
akkuk  (i.,  6)   calls  them    ''that  bitter  and  hasty  na- 


174 


THE  STOR  y  OF  ASS  YRIA. 


tion,  terrible  and  dreadful,"  it  is  the  strongest  pos- 
sible testimony ;  he  had  but  too  much  opportunity 
to  study  them,  for  they  were  triumphant  in  his  time  ; 
theirs  was  the  Empire,  and  Babylon,  "  the  glory  of 
kingdoms,"  was  *'  the  beauty  of  the  Chaldeans' 
pride  "  (Isaiah  xlii.,  19),  so  dazzling  to  the  world 
that  the  Greeks,  with  their  usual  carelessness  of  his- 
torical accuracy,  applied  the  name  "  Chaldea " 
sweepingly  to  the  whole  of  Lower  Mesopotamia. 
This  is  one  of  the  many  current  misnomers  for 
which  they  are  responsible. 


VI. 

SHALMANESER    II. — ASSHUR    AND    ISRAEL. 

"  And  the  people  shall  be  oppressed,  every  one  by  another,  and 
every  one  by  his  neighbor." — Isaiah,  iii.  5. 

I.  We  now  come  to  one  of  the  longest  and  most 

monotonous  reigns  of  which  we  have  any  record, — 

that    of   Asshurnazirpal's    son,    SHALMANESER    IL 

(Shalmanu-usshir).     Were    it    not    for  some    highly 

interesting  monuments  belonp-ing-  to  him 

Shalmane-  ^  fc>      fc> 

serii.,  860-  and  for  the  fact  that  under  him  took 
place  the  first  direct  collision  between 
Assyria  and  Israel,  his  thirty-five  years  (860-824) 
might  be  dismissed  in  a  very  few  lines.  Not  that 
this  monotony  was  one  of  inaction  or  inglorious- 
ness.  Quite  the  contrary.  Assyria  under  this  king 
attained  her  full  growth  and  highest  power,  and  his 
father's  boast  that  he  had  ruled  from  the  sources  of 
the  Tigris  to  the  Lebanon  and  to  the  great  sea  be- 
came a  reality.  It  is  the  sameness  of  those  eternal 
expeditions,  with  the  same  details  of  horrors  and 
cruelties  (although  these  are  not  dwelt  on  at  such 
length,  or  with  such  sickening  complacency  as  in  the 
preceding  "  Annals  "),  which  makes  the  reading  of 
this  king's  historical  inscriptions  so  trying  a  perform- 
ance. The  conqueror  appears  to  us  as  a  sort  of  mar- 
tyr or  drudge  of  military  greatness.     The  campaigns 

US 


176 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


in  their  order — ''  in  my  tenth  year,  .  .  .  ."  "  in  my 
twenty-third  year,  ....*'  "in  my  thirty-first  year" 
— succeed  each  other  with  oppressive  regularity,  like 
the  operation  of  some  baleful  law  of  nature  from 
which  there  is  no  escape,  and  make  one  take  in  the 
full  significance  of  this  matter-of-fact  remark  of  a 
Bible-historian  :  "  And  it  came  to  pass,  at  the  time 
of  the  return  of  the  year,  at  the  time  when  kings  go 
out  to  battle.  .  .  ."  (First  Chronicles,  xx.  i).  It  was 
the  proper  thing  to  go  to  war  in  spring,  as  it  is  now 
to  shoot  grouse  or  ducks  in  autumn,  and  one  almost 
expects  to  see  an  "opening  day"  fixed  for  the  one, 
as  there  is  in  most  countries  for  the  other.  Shalma- 
neser  does  not  seem  to  have  had  leisure  even  for 
hunting;  at  least  no  mention  is  made  of  any  hunting 
feats.  But  we  gather  from  his  records  that  he  cut 
timber  in  the  Amanos  Mountains  eight  several  times, 
and  crossed  the  Euphrates  no  less  than  twenty-four 
times  in  person,  more  than  once  "  in  its  flood,"  which 
must  have  much  increased  the  difficulty.  What 
greatly  enhances  the  tediousness  of  the  narrative  is 
the  abominably  dry,  utterly  unadorned  style,  pecu- 
liar to  the  annalists  of  this  period,  unrelieved  by  any 
little  picturesque  expression  or  touch  of  reality,  such 
as  we  shall  find  in  abundance  two  hundred  years  later. 
The  only  poetical  expression  in  two  long  inscriptions 
is  one  likening  a  mountain  peak  to  a  dagger  that 
cuts  the  sky ;  and  that  is  copied  from  the  annalist  of 
Asshurnazirpal. 

2.  Yet  it  is  not  difficult  to  a  trained  reader  to  peel 
out  of  this  mass  of  prickly  burrs  a  kernel,  if  not  sweet 
and  palatable,  at  least  substantial  enough  to  yield  a 


SHALMANESER  IT. 


177 


great  deal  of  valuable  and  very  interesting  informa- 
tion. The  main  fact,  too,  of  this  reign  at  once  dis- 
closes itself ;  it  is  that  its  heaviest  and  most  contin- 
ued stress  was  directed  against  the  West,  while  the 
North  and  South  are  attacked  only  occasionally  and 
incidentally,  just  enough  to  keep  them  in  subjection. 
Shalmaneser  mentions  that  he  went  up  into  the  land 
of  Nairi,  reached  the  head  springs  of  the  Tigris,  where 
he,  in  imitation  of  his  predecessors,  placed  *'  the  image 
of  his  royalty,"  and  invaded  Armenia  proper  (by  the 
lakes  Van  and  Urumieh),  but  evidently  without  suc- 
ceeding in  definitely  enslaving  those  stubborn  high- 
landers.  On  another  occasion  he  took  the  oppor- 
tunity of  a  quarrel  in  the  royal  house  in  Babylon  to 
display  his  power  there,  to  sacrifice  at  the  great  sanct- 
uaries, and  to  frighten  the  princes  of  Chaldea  into 
sending  him  tribute,  ''striking  terror  unto  the  sea 
(the  Persian  Gulf)  by  the  might  of  his  arms."  Then 
again  he  describes  a  descent  he  made  from  the  coun- 
tries by  the  great  Armenian  lakes,  along  the  eastern 
boundary  of  Assyria,  down  the  Zagros  ;  whether  in  a 
purely  aggressive  spirit,  intent  on  tribute  and  booty, 
or  to  prevent  those  highland  "  kingdoms  "  from  be- 
coming troublesome  neighbors,  does  not  very  clearly 
appear.  At  all  events,  all  these  are  secondary 
features  of  his  career ;  his  great  object  was  to  se- 
cure the  permanent  subjection  of  the  roving  tribes 
of  the  Syrian  Desert,  and  especially  to  put  a  stop  to 
the  independence  of  the  various  Syrian  kingdoms, 
whose  growing  prosperity  and  wealth  made  them 
very  desirable  vassals,  but  most  objectionable  rivals. 

Their  inferiority  in  size,  as  well  as  their  mutual  jeal- 
12 


178 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


ousies  and  bitter  feuds,  made  the  enterprise  practic- 
able. Nevertheless,  it  is  probable  that  the  Assyrian 
conqueror  found  the  work  somewhat  less  easy  and 
rapid  than  he  had  counted  on. 

3.  Shalmaneser  commenced  operations,  not  at  ran- 
dom, nor  with  a  view  merely  to  immediate  plunder, 
but  after  a  well-laid  and  practical  plan.  He  began 
by  scouring  both  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  and,  after 
taking  the  strongest  cities,  he  deprived  them  of  their 
defence  by  carrying  the  inhabitants  away  to  Assyria, 
while  he  settled  Assyrians  in  them  and  changed 
their  very  names.  Karkhemish,  so  important  both 
strategically  and  commercially  as  to  be  the  key  of 
the  great  highroad  from  Egypt  to  the  North,  ad- 
mitted his  sovereignty  without  protest,  and  its  Hit- 
tite  king  sent  him  not  only  large  gifts  in  cattle,  gold, 
silver,  iron,  bronze,  purple  cloth,  etc.,  but  his  own 
daughter  for  his  royal  harem,  with  more  presents, 
together  Vv^ith  the  daughters  of  a  hundred  of  his  no- 
bles. Then,  after  crossing  the  Orontes,  he  marched 
northward  through  the  whole  of  northern  Syria, 
traversed  the  Amanos,  collecting  on  his  passage  a 
goodly  tribute  in  ''cedar  beams,"  the  local  ware  of 
greatest  value,  and  actually  descended  on  the  other 
side  into  Cilicia,  where  he  effected  a  short,  but 
profitable  raid.  On  his  return  he  tarried  awhile 
on  the  Euphrates,  to  receive  the  tribute  sent  by 
**the  kings  of  the  sea-coast  "  and  the  ''kings  of  the 
banks  of  the  Euphrates." 

4.  These  ostentatious  military  promenades  must 
have  been  watched  with  anything  but  comfortable 
feelings  by  the  kings  and  petty  princes  of  Lower 


SHALMANESER  11. 


179 


Syria,  who  could  not  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  they 
boded  them  no  good.  The  king  of  Hamath  es- 
pecially, being  the  nearest,  (on  the  eastern  side  of 
Lebanon,  a  little  north  of  Arvad),  felt  himself  the 
first  on  the  list  for  the  expected  invasion.  But  their 
time  had  not  yet  come.  The  preparatory  cam- 
paign was  ended,  and  it  was  only  in  the  follow- 
ing year — Shalmaneser's  sixth,  854  B.C. — that  the 
storm  burst  over  their  devoted  heads.  They  made 
good  use  of  the  respite,  to  organize  a  coalition  for 
common  defence  and  resistance.  It  was  a  formida- 
ble array.  At  its  head  were  the  three  most  power- 
ful rulers  of  Lower  Syria :  the  king  of  Damas- 
cus, Hadidri  (or  Dadidri),  called  in  the  Bible  Ben- 
HADAD  IL  (First  Kings  xvi.,  xvii.,  and  other  places), 
with  1200  chariots,  1200  horsemen  and  10,000  infan- 
try;  the  king  of  Hamath  (*' Hamath  the  Great," 
as  one  of  the  prophets  calls  him),  with  700  chariots, 
700  horse  and  10,000  infantry  ;  and  AkhaBBU  Sir- 
LA'i  (Ahab  of  Israel),  with  2000  chariots  and  10,000 
men.  Shalmaneser  names  nine  more  princes  who 
brought  or  sent  smaller  contingents  ;  among  them 
we  find  a  king  of  Arvad,  a  king  of  Ammon,  an  Ara- 
bian (probably  Bedouin)  prince  with  1000  camels, 
and — rather  startling — 1000  men  sent  by  the  king 
of  Egypt.  This  last  circumstance  tends  to  show  that 
the  terror  of  the  Assyrian  name  already  began  to 
spread  considerably  further  than  its  immediate  sur- 
roundings, and  that  Egypt,  although  she  could  not 
possibly  dream  as  yet  of  being  actually  overrun  and 
conquered  by  the  Assyrian  arms,  began  to  fear  their 
approach  towards  her  boundaries,  and  was  willing 
to  assist  in  the  general  effort  to  keep  them  off. 


I  So  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

5.  It  is  not  a  little  surprising  to  see  the  king  of 
Israel  in  league  with  some  of  Israel's  bitterest  and 
most  ancient  foes  :  Ammon  and  Hamath  and  Damas- 
cus. Nothing  can  be  more  incongruous  than  the 
elements  thus  assembled,  and  nothing  but  the  most 
imminent  common  peril  could  have  brought  about 
such  a  suspension  of  feuds  and  such  a  fusion  of  con- 
flicting elements.  This  common  danger,  and  this 
alone,  fully  explains  the  reconciliation  between 
Ahab  of  Israel  and  Benhadad  of  Damascus,  related 
at  length  in  the  Bible,  First  Kings,  xx.  There  had 
been  a  fierce  war  between  them,  and  several  battles, 
in  the  last  of  which  Israel  gained  a  decisive  victory, 
and  Benhadad  was  taken  prisoner.  It  is  quite  un- 
expected, at  this  point,  to  see  Ahab,  instead  of  pro- 
ceeding with  so  important  a  prize  according  to  the 
good  old  custom — ''hewing  him  down  before  the 
Lord  " — call  him  "  his  brother";  and  make  a  cov- 
enant with  him.  What  the  articles  of  the  covenant 
were  we  are  not  told,  only  that  "  they  continued 
three  years  without  war  between  Syria  and  Israel  " 
(First  Kings,  xxii.  i).  But  the  blank  in  the  biblical 
narrative  is  admirably  filled  by  the  Assyrian  con- 
temporary monuments,  the  two  great  inscriptions  of 
Shalmaneser  II.  One  of  them  gives  the  entire  list 
of  the  allies,  the  other  merely  speaks  of  them  collect- 
ively as  "  Dadidri  of  Damascus,  Irkhulina  of  Ha- 
math, with  the  kings  of  the  land  Khatti,  and  of  the 
sea-coast  " — a  passage  which  well  shows  in  what  a 
sweeping  sense  the  name  "  Khatti  "  was  used  at  that 
time. 

6.  Not  since  the  times  of  the  great  Hittite  con- 


SHALMANESER  II.  igj 

federacy  against  Ramses  II.,  and  the  battles  of 
Megiddo  and  Kadesh,  had  there  been  so  strong  and 
united   an  armament  of   Asiatic   nations.        _     ,     ^ 

Battle  of 

The  aUies  felt   so  confident  and  buoyant        „^arkar, 

.  854  B.C. 

that  they  marched  to  meet  the  Assyrian, 
and  offered  him  battle  by  the  city  of  Karkar,  near 
the  Orontes.  Whatever  the  issue,  he  should  at 
least  be  kept  away  from  their  own  countries.  That 
issue  appears  to  have  been  somewhat  doubtful. 
He  declares  in  one  inscription  that  he  killed  of  them 
14,000  men  ;  in  the  other  and  later  one  the  figure 
grows  to  20,500  ;  he  asserts  that,  by  the  help  of  As- 
shur  the  great  Lord,  he  defeated  them.  "Like  the 
god  Raman  I  thundered  down  on  them."  .  .  .  "  In 
that  battle  I  took  their  chariots,  their  horses,  their 
teams."  Plunder  and  slaughter  there  may  have 
been  enough.  But  we  do  not  see  that  the  Assyrian 
army  advanced  further  than  the  Orontes,  and  there 
is  not  the  slightest  mention  of  vassalage  and  trib- 
ute. An  Assyrian  king  never  acknowledged  a  de- 
feat ;  but  his  silence  is  sometimes  very  significant 
— as  in  this  case.  It  is  evident  that  the  victory  at 
least  cannot  have  been  as  complete  as  Shalmaneser 
claims,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  five  years  before  he 
returned  to  the  charge,  makes  the  repulse  he  en- 
countered look  suspiciously  like  a  defeat.  This  in- 
terval is  partly  filled  by  his  expedition  "■  to  the  head 
of  the  river,  the  springs  of  the  Tigris,  the  place 
where  the  waters  rise,"  and  where  he  set  up  "an 
image  of  his  royalty  of  large  size,"  and  by  that 
to  Babylon  and  the  land  Kaldu."  After  that,  he 
hovered  for  two  years  about   the  Euphrates,  before 


1 82  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

he  made  another  decisive  move  and  marched  down 
into  Hamath.  There  he  met  his  old  opponent, 
Benhadad,  with  "  twelve  of  the  kings  of  Khatti,"  as 
before, — and  was  again  repulsed. 

7.  One  is  tempted  to  suspect  that  the  number 
'*  twelve,"  which  is  again  repeated  on  a  later  occasion, 
is  given  somewhat  at  random,  as  a  round  and  effec- 
tive figure.  They  were,  at  all  events,  not  always 
the  same  twelve.  At  the  time  of  the  second  Syrian 
campaign,  Ahab  of  Israel  was  no  more,  and  the  un- 
natural alliance  with  Damascus  had  been  broken 
the  moment  that  the  pressure  of  an  immediate 
common  danger  had  ceased.  In  the  recoil,  Ahab 
had  thrown  himself  into  the  arms  of  the  king  of 
Judah,  and  both  had  united  their  forces  against 
Benhadad  ;  there  was  a  great  battle,  and  in  that 
battle  Ahab  fell.  With  him  ended  the  rule  of  a 
house  which  had  bid  fair  to  be  a  prosperous  and 
powerful  dynasty  in  the  land  of  Israel.  His  father 
Omri,  a  valiant  soldier  and  a  bold  usurper,  had 
taken  the  crown  to  himself  in  the  midst  of  con- 
spiracy, murder,  civil  war,  favored  and  upheld  by 
the  army  which  he  commanded.  He  was  an  ener- 
getic and  statesmanlike  sovereign,  and  his  great 
care  had  been  the  consolidation  of  the  northern 
Jewish  royalty  and  nation  (Israel).  Like  David, 
he  bought  a  hill  and  built  on  it  a  royal  city, 
Samaria,  which  at  once  became  the  capital  of 
Israel.  His  son  was  fully  as  capable  and  energetic 
as  he  had  been,  and  sought  to  strengthen  his 
house  and  throne  by  marriage  with  a  Tyrian 
princess.        It   was  probably  in   the   time  of   these 


SHALMANESER  IL  1 83 

monarchs  that  the  fame  of  Israel  reached  the 
Assyrian  kings,  who  must  have  been  strongly  im- 
pressed by  the  reports  of  their  power  and  splendor, 
since  the  whole  kingdom  became  to  them  ''  the 
house  of  Omri," — Bit-Khumri,  according  to  the 
Assyrian  fashion  of  naming  countries  after  the 
founders  of  their  reigning  houses. 

8.  A  third  Syrian  campaign  did  not  bring  about 
any  more  decisive  results.  The  coalition  still  ex- 
isted and  held  its  own,  although  Shalmaneser  this 
time  brought  down  an  apparently  overwhelming 
force. 

"  In  my  fourteenth  year  "  {846  B.C.),  he  reports  on  one  of  his  colos- 
sal winged  bulls,  "  I  called  together  an  innumerable  force  from  the 
whole  wide  land.  With  120,000  men  I  crossed  the  Euphrates  in  its 
flood.  In  those  days,  Dadidri  of  Damascus,  Irkhulini  of  Hamath, 
with  twelve  kings  of  the  coast  of  the  Upper  and  Lower  Seas  (por- 
tions of  the  Mediterranean)  assembled  their  great,  their  numberless 
troops,  and  advanced  against  me.  I  gave  them  battle  and  put  them 
to  flight,  destroyed  their  chariots,  their  cavalry,  took  their  baggag'^' 
from  them.     To  make  their  lives  safe  they  departed." 

His  principal  opponent  was  still  old  Benhadad,  un- 
daunted as  ever,  supported  this  time  principally 
by  the  ''kings  of  the  sea-coast,"  i.  e.,  the  Phoe 
nicians,  and,  possibly,  the  Philistines  of  the  five 
cities.  (See  p.  150.)  We  note  also  the  old  tactics: 
to  meet  the  foe,  to  bear  the  brunt,  and  break  his 
onslaught,  keeping  him  at  a  distance, — successful, 
but  for  the  last  time.  A  revolution,  of  which  the  de- 
tails are  unknown,  but  which  placed  an  usurper  on 
the  throne  of  Damascus — the  Syrian  palace  officer, 
Hazael,  who  murdered  his  aged  master  Benhadad 
II.  (see  Second  Kings,  viii.  7-15), — appears  to  have 


1 84 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 


dissolved  the  coalition.  For  when,  after  another 
respite  of  four  years,  the  Assyrian  perseveringly 
returns  to  the  charge,  he  mentions  only  one  op- 
ponent, Khazailu  of  Damascus,  who,  perhaps 
made  timid  by  his  isolation,  awaits  him  in  his  own 
country,  amidst  the  strongholds  of  the  mountains 
opposite  the  Lebanon  range  (Anti-Lebanon),  and 
there  suffers  so  signal  a  defeat,  with  such  grievous 
loss  of  men,  chariots,  cavalry  and  baggage,  that 
he  is  fain  to  retreat  to  his  capital,  whither  the  con- 
queror follows  him,  Shalmaneser,  however,  does  not 
say  that  he  took  it,  only  :  "  In  Damascus,  his  royal 
city,  I  besieged  him  ;  I  destroyed  his  plantations." 
Immediately  afterwards  he  marches  to  the  sea-coast, 
there  to  receive  the  repentant  submission  and  the 
tributes  of  Tyre  and  Sidon,  and — of  "  Yahua,  the 
SON  OF  Khumri."  This  latter  is  no  other  than 
Jehu,  the  new  king  of  Israel.  He  was  in  no  sense  a 
"son  of  Omri,"  i.e.^  a  member  of  Omri's  house, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  the  destroyer  of  that  house, — 
an  adventurous  captain  who,  having  had  himself  pro- 
claimed king  by  his  soldiers,  drove  furiously  to  the 
capital,  put  to  death  the  young  king  and  his  mother, 
and  ordered  the  massacre  of  King  Ahab's  entire 
family, — seventy  young  sons,  the  biblical  historian 
tells  us,  who  were  under  the  care  of  various  noble 
elders  of  the  nation.  (Second  Kings,  ix.-x.)  There 
is  a  strange  incongruity  in  seeing  this  man  called 
**  son  of  Omri  "  on  two  Assyrian  monuments.  It 
may  have  happened  either  from  ignorance  of  the 
events,  or  because  the  name  of  Omri,  having  once 
strongly  impressed  itself  on  the  Assyrian  politicians' 


SHALMANESER  II.  1 85 

minds,  became  a  fixed  tradition,  so  that  the  land 
of  Israel  remained  to  the  end  '''  The  House  of  Omri," 
and  the  kings  of  Israel,  quite  irrespective  of  any 
changes  of  dynasty,  the  successors,  and  therefore 
the  sons,  of  Omri. 

9.  In  the  ruins  of  Shalmaneser's  palace,  which 
occupy  the  centre  of  the  great  Nimrud  mound, 
Layard  found  a  very  remarkable  monument,  a  pil- 
lar in  hard  black  stone,  about  seven  feet  high,  of 
the  shape  known  as  ''  obelisk."  Owing  to  the  hard- 
ness of  the  stone  it  was  in  excellent  preservation, 
far  better  than  that  of  another  and  larger  monument 
of  the  same  shape,  in  white  soft  stone,  belonging  to 
Asshurnazirpal.  The  four  faces  are  covered  with 
sculptures  and  writing,  five  rows  of  the  former  and 
a  great  many  lines  of  the  latter.  (See  111.  No.  28.) 
This  is  the  so-called  ''Obelisk-Inscription,"  which 
presents  a  record  of  Shalmaneser's  wars  to  nearly 
the  last  year  of  his  reign.  The  sculptures  represent 
processions  of  tribute-bearers  from  five  nations.  On 
one  of  the  faces  (see  No.  29),  we  see -certain  per- 
sonages presented  to  the  king  by  his  palace  officers, 
one  of  whom  holds  a  scroll — probably  a  list  of  the  ar- 
ticles composing  the  tribute.  The  attitude  of  these 
personages  shows  that  there  is  no  exasf-   ^  ^     ^^. 

'^  °  fc>     Jenu,  King 

geration  in  the  phrase  so  frequently  re-  a*"^^tr^' 
curring  on  the  monuments:  "My  feet  mane°s?r^ii" 
they  took,"  or  "  They  kissed  my  feet."  ^^rlaf  842 
The   prostrate   personage  on   the  second  ^'^' 

row  has  been  thought  to  be  the  ambassador  of 
Jehu,  but  it  seems  more  probable,  from  the  tenor 
of  the    inscription    overhead,    that    it    is  Jehu  him- 


28.— 


m 


BLACK    OBELISK   OF   SHALMANESER   IJ. 


S/JALMAA'ESER  //. 


187 


self.  This  is  a  literal  rendering  of  the  inscription  : 
"Tribute  of  Yahua,  son  of  Khumri :  silver,  gold, 
basins  of  gold,  bottles  of  gold,  vessels  of  gold, 
buckets  of  gold,  lead,  ....(?)  wood,  royal  treas- 
ure, ....(?)  wood,  I  received."  ^'"  Most  of  these 
different  articles  can  be  identified  on  the  sculpture, 
which  also  admirably  renders  the  cringing,  fearful 
attitude  of  the  bearers,  as  well  as  the  unmistakably 
Jewish  cast  of  their  features.  Although  this  row  of 
sculpture  is  of  course  the  most  important  from  its 
biblical  associations,  yet  some  others  are,  in  them- 
selves, more  amusing,  from  the  number  of  various 
and  uncommon  animals  represented ;  the  elephant, 
the  antelopes,  the  two  camels,  the  monkeys,  are 
evidently  destined  to  enrich  the  royal  parks  and 
menageries,  and  one  cannot  Jielp  admiring  the  lively 
touches  with  which  the  artist  has  reproduced  their 
most  taking  and  characteristic  features.     (See  Nos. 

29-33.) 

10.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  neither  of  the  biblical 
historical  books  referring  to  this  period,  i.e.,  neither 
in  Second  Kings,  nor  in  Second  Chronicles,  is  there 
the  slightest  mention  of  two  such  important  events 
as  the  participation  of  Ahab  in  the  Syrian  league  and 
the  war  against  Shalmaneser  II.,  and  the  submission 
of  Jehu.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  reason  for  so 
strange  an  omission,  unless  it  be  that  these  events 
were  duly  narrated  in  a  book  which  has  apparently 
been  lost,  and  to  which  we  are  continually  referred, 


*  Prof.  D.  G.  Lyon,  to  whose  kindness  we  are  indebted  for  the  trans- 
lation, is  of  opinion  that  the  prostrate  personage  is  Jehu  himself. 


M^^  VT  ^-'^^Tr?"^^^:;:^^ 


'  ^  r^'^' 


>>T  g^T#f  ^  T  tE4:^>^1T^^gr^g:.^^><^  !?  Tf 


29.— FIRST   FACE   OF    BLACK    OBELISK.       (jEHU    OF   ISRAEL   ON   THE 

SECOND   ROW.) 

188 


1  >  '■ "  I         ■■III     '  't.  L    I  ij'aMiW 


30. — SECOND  FACE   OF  BLACK  OBELISK.      (JEWISH  TRIBUTE-BFARERS 

ON    SECOND   ROW.) 

189 


IQO 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


under  the  title  of  "The  Book  of  the  Chronicles  of 
the  Kings  of  Israel."  *'  Now  the  rest  of  the  acts  of 
Jehu,  and  all  that  he  did,  and  all  his  might,  are 
they  not  written  in  the  Book  of  the  Chronicles  of 
the  Kings  of  Israel  ?  "  This  formula  is  used,  almost 
unvaried,  at  the  death  of  every  king.  But  the 
book  itself  is  missing. 

II.  Another  monument  belonging  to  this  king, 
of  great  interest  and  artistic  value,  and  moreover 
quite  unique  of  its  kind,  was  discovered  about  ten 
years  ago  by  Mr.  Hormuzd  Rassam  (formerly  Lay- 
ard's  assistant,  now  his  successor  in  the  field  of  As- 
syrian excavations).  We  will  leave  the  explorer  to 
speak  for  himself: 

"In  1877,  in  a  mound  called  Balawat,  about  15  miles  east  of 
Mossul,  and  9  from  Nimrud,  I  found  scrolls  of  the  copper  plating  of 
an  Assyrian  monument.  The  copper"  (more  properly  bronze)  "  was 
very  much  injured  from  the  immense  time  it  had  been  buried.  The 
top  part  was  3-4  feet  from  the  surface  of  the  ground,  the  bottom  1 5 
feet.  It  is  now  in  the  British  Museum.  It  is  thought  to  be  the  coat- 
ing of  a  huge  gate  with  double  leaves,  the  thickness  of  which  must 
have  been  about  four  inches,  as  shown  by  the  bend  of  the  nails  that 
fastened  the  plates  to  the  wooden  frame." 

These  scrolls  or  strips  are  covered  with  bas-reliefs 
of  the  usual  type,  not  cast  in  moulds,  but  hammered 
out  from  the  inside,  the  kind  of  work  now  known  as 
repousse.  The  sockets  were  found  on  the  spot,  and 
it  was  easy  for  a  skilful  draughtsman  to  imagine  the 
gates  in  their  original  aspect.  An  inscription,  con- 
cisely rehearsing  the  events  of  the  first  nine  years, 
ran  around  it.  It  belonged  to  a  city  built  by  As- 
shurnazirpal,  and  rnust  have  been  very  imposing  and 


HHALMANESER  II.  IQt 

massive,  but  not  clumsy,  owing  to  its  fine  propor- 
tions.    (See  No.  34.) 

12.  The  last  seven  or  eight  years  of  his  life  Shal- 
maneser  spent  in  well-earned  repose,  mostly  in 
Kalah,  building,  repairing,  ministering  to  the  "great 
gods."  It  was  he  who  completed  the  great  Zig- 
gurat  of  the  temple  of  Nineb,  begun  by  his  father, 
— that  very  ''  pyramid  "  the  ruins  of  which  puzzled 
Xenophon  when  he  halted  by  Larissa."^  His  wars 
meantime  were  conducted  by  his  general-in-chief, 
victoriously  it  would  appear.  But  they  were  com- 
paratively unimportant,  now  the  great  work  of  this 
indefatigable  monarch's  reign — the  subjection  of 
Syria — was  accomplished.  He  was  not  permitted, 
however,  to  enjoy  the  power  he  had  so  much  en- 
larged, undisturbed  to  the  end.  His  eldest  son  re- 
belled against  him,  and  succeeded  in  enlisting  on  his 
side  a  large  portion  of  Assyria  proper.  As  many  as 
sixteen  cities  are  said  to  have  declared  for  the  rebel 
prince.  It  was  therefore  another  son,  Shamshi- 
Raman  III.,  who  succeeded  to  the  throne  after 
quelling  the  rebellion.     (See  No.  35.) 

13.  Nothing  much  of  note  is  recorded  of  this 
king,  while  his  son  and  successor,  RamAn-Nirarj 
III.,  reproduces  in  great  part  his  grandfather's  glo- 
rious career,  not  only  by  the  length  of  his  reign, 
which  nearly  equals  Shalmaneser's,  but  by  the  num- 
ber and  importance  of  his  campaigns,  especially 
those  against  Syria.  To  enumerate  or  describe 
them  would  be  most  tedious  and  unprofitable  iter- 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  3. 


^^^^^p^^?^^^^"^    '^^^'^^I^'^ 


h 


M^T^  Vi^>y"T)TTT  ^^>TTt^"T^vnp: 


/  ^^If^i-<ffyJT<S(^>*^y^^*<^^'^y^^^ 


31. — THIRD    FACE   OF   BLACK   OBELISK.      (JEWISH    TRIBUTE-BEARERS 

ON    SECOND  ROW.) 

192 


■j!^  jj^y  "U^  r^f  ^-•^*'^^-'i-'  ^l^T  F^     fc^ig-I^J^;±^^^ 


I  "  ,  .  I,'. II    I     I       I     ■■m    ■■     111.'*-  *"*^| 


32. — FOURTH    FACE   OF    OKELISK.       (JEWISH   TRIBUTE-BEARERS 

ON    SECOND    ROW.) 
13  193 


194 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


ation,  the  general  character  being  always  the  same. 
Suffice  it  to  say,  that  he  completed  the  subjection 
of  Aram,  by  actually  taking  the  capital,  Damas- 
cus, a  triumph  which  Shalmaneser  never  quite  suc- 
ceeded in  achieving,  and  imposing  on  it  a  tribute 
which  almost  passes  conception,  besides  the  booty 
taken  in  battle  and  on  the  march.  For  the  rest  he 
fairly  sums  up  his  own  career  when  he  says  :  *'  West 
of  the  Euphrates  I  subdued  the  land  Khatti,  the 
whole  of  the  land  Akharri  (Phoenicia),  Tyre,  Sidon, 
Bit-Khumri,  Edom  and  Philistia,  unto  the  shore 
of  the  Sea  of  the  Setting  Sun,  and  imposed  on  them 
tributes  and  contributions."  Neither  Israel  nor  the 
cities  of  the  sea-coast  were  conquered  as  yet  by 
force  of  arms,  but  they  had  sent  presents.  That 
was  a  dangerous  precedent,  for,  according  to  As- 
syrian ideas,  sending  presents  was  tantamount  to 
declaring  one's  self  a  vassal,  and  whoever,  having 
done  so  once,  did  not  repeat  the  act  of  homage, — 
in  fact  pay  regular  yearly  tribute, — was  held  a  rebel, 
and  treated  as  such.  "All  the  kings  of  Kaldu  " 
are  mentioned  as  obediently  paying  tribute,  but 
Na'iri  does  not  seem  to  have  been  much  visited. 
In  compensation,  we  find  the  names  of  a  great  many 
hitherto  scarcely  or  not  at  all  noted  "  kingdoms " 
and  ''  nations," — *'  tribes  "  would  be  less  mislead- 
ing,— on  the  north-east  and  the  east,  i.  e.,  among 
the  spurs  and  outer  ridges  of  the  Zagros,  from  the 
great  lakes  down  to  Elam.  Among  these  names  we 
particularly  mark  that  of  the  Medes,  (Madai),  of 
whom  a  great  deal  more  hereafter. 

14.   Raman-nirari  III.  was  married  to  a  princess  of 


33— TRIBUTE-BEARERS   BRINGING   MONKEYS.      (SEE   NO.    32, 

THIRD    ROW,) 


196 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 


the  name  of  Shammuramat.  This  the  Greeks  cor- 
rupted  into  Semiramis.  It  is  the  name  of  a  fabu- 
lous queen,  about  whom  the  most  extravagant 
stories  were  current,  and  being  transmitted  by  sev- 
eral Greek  writers  were  taught  as  actual  history  down 
to  the  time  of  cuneiform  discoveries,  i.  e.,  as  late 
even  as  some  thirty  years  ago.  This  is  the  story  in 
briefest  outline. 

In  very  ancient  times  there  Avere  kings  in  Asia  ; 
but  they  did  nothing  worthy  of  note,  and  no  records 
of  them  existed,  until  in  the  number  there  arose  a 
mighty  man  of  war,  the  Assyrian  NiNUS.  He  began 
to  make  conquests  right  and  left,  and  founded  a  vast 
empire.  The  whole  of  Asia  Minor  to  the  sea,  Arme- 
nia and  Media  were  subject  to  him.  He  conquered 
all  the  lands  around  the  Black  and  Caspian  seas, 
even  to  portions  of  Southern  Russia,  and  all  the 
countries  which  compose  modern  Persia,  not  to 
speak  of  Arabia.  Then  he  built  a  magnificent  capi- 
tal for  himself,  to  which  he  gave  his  own  name, 
Ninus — even  the  city  of  Nineveh.  He  had  a  trusty 
general,  Onnes,  or  Oannes,  and  this  general's  wife, 
Semiramis,  was  the  most  beautiful  of  all  women. 
Indeed  she  was  something  more  than  mortal  woman. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  the  Syrian  fish-goddess, 
Derketo,  and  had  been  nurtured  as  a  babe  in  a  rocky 
wilderness,  not  far  from  her  mother's  sanctuary  at 
AscaJon  (see  p.  in  and  p.  114)  by  doves,  until  she 
was  found  by  shepherds.  They  took  her  to  their 
chief,  SiMMAS,  the  overseer  of  the  royal  flocks,  who 
brought  her  up  as  his  own  child.  One  day  the  royal 
governor,  Onnes,  accidentally  met  her,  and  as  it  was 


■I'rf 


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r~."r-?r^t.;3; 


P^,r^.s4^tiitf4-'.?^.4^.'-.-j 


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I'll!  I  V' 


K^±\y^y<..f■^^ss4V^)^?:^i}X . 


34. — GATE  OF   BALAWAT.      (RESTORED.) 


197 


198 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


impossible  to  see  without  loving  her,  he  immediately 
lost  his  heart  to  her  and  made  her  his  wife.  She 
proved  as  wise  and  brave  as  she  was  beautiful,  and 
on  one  occasion,  by  her  personal  prowess,  helped 
her  husband  and  King  Ninus  to  take  a  strong  for- 
tress, which  had  long  resisted  them.  The  king  at 
once  succumbed  to  her  fatal  gift  of  beauty,  and  took 
her  from  Onnes,  who  killed  himself  from  grief. 
Semiramis  became  Ninus'  queen,  and  so  fondly  did 
he  dote  on  her  to  his  end,  that  when  he  died,  after  a 
reign  of  52  years,  he  left  his  whole  empire  to  her, 
although  they  had  a  son,  NiNYAS. 

15.  Semiramis  now  showed  herself  a  greater  sov- 
ereign than  even  King  Ninus  had  been,  for  to  a 
most  royal  ambition  and  great  deeds  of  war  she 
joined  a  noble  genius  for  the  useful  works  of  peace. 
She  built  the  city  of  Babylon,  with  its  hanging  gar- 
dens, mighty  walls  and  towers,  the  great  temple  of 
Bel,  and  the  wonderful  bridge  over  the  Euphrates. 
She  ordered  the  seven-ridged  chain  of  the  Zagros  to 
be  broken  through  to  construct  a  direct  and  com- 
modious road  into  Media,  where  she  built  the  capi- 
tal, Egbatana,  with  a  fine  royal  castle,  and  supplied 
it  with  water  brought  down  from  some  mountain 
lakes  through  a  tunnel.  There  is  in  the  Zagros 
highlands  a  tall,  almost  perpendicular,  three-peaked 
rock-mountain,  near  a  place  anciently  called  Bagis- 
tana.  She  ordered  the  face  of  that  rock  to  be  care- 
fully smoothed  and  covered  with  sculptures,  repre- 
senting her  with  one  hundred  of  her  body-guard. 
Her  warlike  expeditions  surpassed  in  boldness  those 
of    the   king,  her    lord  ;    she    not    only   conquered 


25. — STELE  OF  SHAMSHl-RAMAN   HI.     (iV.  ACCORDING  TO   SOME). 

199 


200  ^"^-^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

Egypt,  Ethiopia  and  part  of  Libya,  but  organized 
and  led  a  campaign  against  India.  She  had  reached 
and  actually  bridged  the  river  Indus,  and  was  pre- 
paring to  advance  into  the  country,  when  she  was 
met  by  an  Indian  force,  defeated,  and  compelled  to 
retire  with  heavy  loss.  This  disaster  did  not  much 
affect  the  queen's  haughty  spirit.  She  returned  to 
her  dominions,  where  she  gave  herself  up  to  a  life 
of  pleasure  and  luxury,  in  which  she  indulged  as 
passionately  as  in  war  and  work  in  her  intervals  of 
leisure.  Her  unearthly  gift  of  beauty  was  not  im- 
paired by  age  ;  a  look  from  her  made  men  her  slaves, 
and  her  court  was  brilliant  beyond  words.  But  her 
son,  Ninyas,  tired  of  his  obscure  and  inglorious  lot, 
conspired  against  her.  The  queen  discovered  the 
conspiracy  and  remembered  an  old  prophesy,  accord- 
ing to  which  she  was  to  be  gathered  to  the  immor- 
tals and  receive  divine  honors  when  her  son  should 
rebel  against  her.  So  she  made  over  the  empire  to 
Ninyas,  and  ordered  all  her  nobles  and  generals  to 
swear  allegiance  to  him.  As  for  herself,  she  turned 
herself  into  a  dove  and  flew  out  of  the  palace  with  a 
flock  of  doves.  From  that  time  the  Assyrians  hon- 
ored Semiramis  as  a  goddess,  and  held  the  dove 
sacred.  Assyrian  art  repeatedly  represented  this 
transformation.  There  are,  however,  also  other 
versions  of  her  death. 

i6.  Ninyas  proved  as  feeble  and  contemptible  a 
monarch  as  his  parents  had  been  ambitious  and 
active.  He  shut  himself  up  in  his  palace,  spent 
most  of  his  time  in  the  harem  in  effeminate  idleness, 
never   showed  hirnself  in  public,  and  governed  en- 


SHALMANESER  II.  20I 

tirely  through  his  generals  and  dignitaries.  And 
long  as  the  Assyrian  Empire  endured,  until  it  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Medes,  i.  c,  over  1300  years, 
all  his  successors  lived  and  governed  in  the  same 
inglorious  way,  and  not  one  of  them  left  a  name  or 
a  deed  worthy  to  be  recorded. 

17.  The  facts  of   history,  as  they  have  been   re- 
vealed by  the  cuneiform  monuments,  make  it  almost 
superfluous  even  to  point  out  the  utter  incongruity 
of  the  whole  narrative.     The  Greeks  learned  it  not 
from  the  Assyrians  themselves,  but  from  their  suc- 
cessors,   the    Medes    and    Persians,    under   circum- 
stances which  are  better  reserved  for  another  volume. 
It  is  a  story  of  the  kind  that  belongs,  not  to  history, 
but  to  folk-lore,  and  perhaps    in    part    to    national 
epos,  in  so  far  as  Ninus,  the  eponym  of  Nineveh,  and 
Semiramis,  the  dove-woman,  are  persons  from  the 
Assyrian    pantheon   transferred  to  earth  in   human 
form.     Ninus  is   most   probably   a  heroic    form    of 
Nineb,  one  of  the  most  popular  protecting  deities 
of    the    Assyrian    kings,    while    Semiramis    (whose 
Assyrian    name,   ''  Shammuramat,"    means    simply 
"dove")'^  is,  beyond  doubt,  none   other   than  the 
goddess   Ishtar  in  her  double  character  as  Lady  of 
War  and   Queen    of   Love   and    beauty — Ishtar   of 
Arbela   and   Ishtar    of     Nineveh    in    their   original 
unity.     It  may  be  just  pointed  out  that  the  names 
of   Onnes  and   Simmas  strongly  suggest  two  more 

*  Fr.  Lenormant,  in  a  private  letter,  formally  retracting  the  elabo- 
rate interpretation  of  the  name  which  he  attempted  in  his  "  Lec;ende 
de  Semiramis,"  in  favor  of  this  simpler  and  so  much  more  obvious 
one. 


202 


THE  STOR  V  OF  ASSYRIA. 


div^ine  beings,  Oannes-Ea  and  Shamash.  This  part 
of  the  story,  therefore,  is  unmistakably  and  trans- 
parently mythical.  As  for  the  gross  historical 
incongruities  of  the  whole,  this  is  not  the  place  to 
explain  them.  We  shall  have  to  return  to  the  sub- 
ject. One  thing  is  sure  :  that  the  only  historical 
Shammuramat  or  Semiramis  is  Raman-nirari  III.'s 


36. — SEMIRAMIS  CHANGED  INTO  A  DOVE.  (BRONZE  ORNAMENT 
BENT  TO  FIT  THE  SHAPE  OF  A  DRINKING-CUP,  AND  SERVE  AS 
HANDLE.) 


queen, — the  only  Assyrian  queen,  by  the  way,  whose 
name  is  recorded  in  monumental  inscriptions.  It 
occurs  on  the  pedestals  of  two  statues  of  the  god 
Nebo,  which  are  said  to  be  consecrated  by  the  gov- 
ernor of  Kalah  to  Nebo,  ''the  protector  of  Raman- 
nirari,  king  of  Asshur,  his  lord,  and  of  Shammuramat, 
the  consort  of  the  palace,  his  lady."  Nothing  has 
been  discovered  as  yet  to  account  for  this  departure 
from  universal  Oriental  custom.  It  has  been  sug- 
gested  that  the  queen  may  have  been  a  princess   of 


SHALMANESER  IT. 


?03 


Babylon,  and  as  such  have  exercised  some  power  in 

her  own  right. 

1 8.  Raman-nirari  III.'s  reign  of  twenty-nine  years 
(811-782)  takes  us  over  into  another  century,  and  at 
his  death  the  eighth  century  B.C.  is  well  under  way. 
The  next  forty  years  or  so  are  filled  by  three  mon. 
archs  who  do  not  seem  to  have  added  anything  to 


37. — SEMIRAMIS   CHANGED    INTO   A    DOVE.      (BACK   VIEW.) 

the  lustre  of  their  country's  name,  or  rather  appear 
to  have  suffered  it  to  become  obscured  once  more. 
True,  we  do  not  read  of  risings  in  the  West,  the 
Syrian  countries  being  probably  too  much  weak- 
ened to  muster  so  soon  a  sufficiency  of  men  and 
means,  nor  are  the  lands  of  Nairi  conspicuous ;  but 
the  far  North-east,  Urartu, — z'.r.,  Armenia  proper, 
the  mountainous  countries  around  the  great  lakes, — 
becomes  troublesome  and  threatening.  Raman- 
nirari's  son,  Shalmaneser  in.,in  a  reign  of  only  ten 


204 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


years,  records  six  expeditions  against  Urartu,  with- 
out any  very  apparent  results.     The  reason  was  that 
a   kingdom  of   some    extent    and    importance  was 
forming  in  that  region,  probably  out  of  many   loose 
tribes  of  kindred  race,  who  felt  the  need  of  greater 
compactness,  for  purposes  of  independence,  defence, 
and  perhaps  aggression.    This  was  the  kingdom  which 
has  been  called   Van,  the  name   of  Armenia  being 
of  much  later  date.     That  of  Urartu,  given  to  it  by 
the  Assyrians,  must  really  have  been    the   original 
one,  or  very  near  it,  as  we  are  led   to  conclude  by 
that   of  Mount   Ararat,   which   still    belongs  to 
the  highest  mountain  of  Armenia.     The  people  who 
inhabited  this  intricate  land   of  mountains,  the    ex- 
act extent  of  which  towards  any  side  it  is  impossible 
to  determine,  are  called  by  the  later  Greek  geogra- 
phers Alarodians,  an  obvious  corruption  of  Urartu, 
no  whit  more  unlike  the  original  than  any  transcrip- 
tions left   us   by  the   Greeks,  who   were   detestable 
linguists  and  were  never  known  to  catch  the   sound 
of  a  foreign  name,  to  which  peculiarity  of  theirs  we 
owe  a  number  of  historical  and  geographical  puzzles, 
not    half  of  which  have   been    fully  solved  as  yet. 
The  capital  of  the  new  kingdom  was  the  city  of  Van. 
Some  traces  of  it   have    been   found,  consisting   of 
native    monuments,  with  inscriptions  in  cuneiform 
characters,  also  some  sculptures,  on  slabs  or  steles, 
or  on  convenient  surfaces  of  live  rock  smoothed  for 
the  purpose,  showing  that  the  new  nation  borrowed 
the  forms  of  Assyrian  culture,  even  while  carrying 
on  an  unceasing  warfare  with  the  Assyrian  nation. 
19.  Urartu  at    first    appears  only  as  one   of   the 


SHALMANESER  11. 


205 


kingdoms  of  Nairi.  It  is  highly  probable  that  it 
was  the  most  considerable  one  among  them,  as  well 
as  the  most  inaccessible,  and  thus  gained  a  sort  of 
supremacy,  which  may  have  developed  into  actual 
sovereignty,  for  the  kings  at  Van,  in  this  their  pe- 
riod of  growth,  call  themselves  ''  Kings  of  Nairi  " 
generally,  while  they  tell  of  conflicts  with  the 
Khatti,  (the  Hittites  south  of  the  Amanos),  and 
sundry  victories  over  the  Assyrians — a  detail  we 
should  vainly  look  for  on  the  records  of  Raman- 
nirari's  successors.  These  inscriptions,  in  which  the 
familiar  wedge  is  forced  into  new  and  strange  com- 
binations, to  express  a  new  and  uncongenial  lan- 
guage, have  only  v^ery  lately  begun  to  yield  to  the 
efforts  and  ingenuity  of  Professor  A.  H.  Sayce,  that 
great  pioneer  and  decipherer,  but  for  whom  this 
earliest  Armenian  kingdom,  with  its  very  powerful 
native  dynasty,  might  never  have  been  revealed. 
This  people,  the  Alarodians,  he  frequently,  on  that 
account,  calls  PrOTO-Armenian,  {protos  is  a  Greek 
word,  meaning  ''first,"  earliest),  to  distinguish  them 
from  the  later  Armenians,  who  were  invaders  of 
entirely  different  race  and  culture.  Mr.  Sayce  has 
conclusively  shown  from  the  language  of  the  monu- 
ments at  Van  that  the  Proto-Armenians  were  not 
Semites  ;  neither  were  they  Turanians.  He  thinks 
— and  the  conclusion  is  gaining  wider  and  firmer 
ground — that  they  were  a  branch  of  the  great  Hit- 
tite  family,  which  occupied  the  whole  of  Nairi, 
broken  up  into  innumerable  independent  tribes,  and 
at  various  times,  not  to  be  determined  historically, 
hived  off  in  different  directions  into  the  vast  and  in- 


2o6  ^-^^  SrOKY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

viting  valleys  of  Asia  Minor.  It  is  certainly  remark- 
able that  the  mountaineers  of  that  entire  region  to 
this  day  wear  the  high  fur  cap,  boots  with  upturned 
points,  and  belted  kaftan,  which  we  see  on  the  Hit- 
tite  sculptures.  (See  Nos.  6^,  68.)  Mr.  Sayce  is  of 
opinion  that  the  westward  extension  of  the  Hittites 
may  be  located  between  the  fifteenth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  B.C.,  i.e.,  in  the  first  period  of  Assyrian 
greatness. 

20.  Of  Raman-nirari's  three  successors,  the  first, 
Shalmaneser  III.,  might  have  done  more  had  he  lived 
longer ;  but  the  two  last  seem  to  have  gradually 
sunk  into  inaction.  At  least,  it  has  been  noticed 
that  the  annotated  eponym  canon  more  and  more 
frequently  has  the  note  :  "  In  the  land,"  meaning 
that  the  king  had  stayed  at  home  that  year.  It  has 
even  been  surmised  that  this  may  have  been  the 
cause  of  discontent  in  the  army,  used  to  yearly  cam- 
paigns, which  never  failed,  at  all  events,  to  enrich 
the  soldiers  and  the  country  generally  with  booty  ; 
a  plausible  explanation,  it  must  be  admitted,  of  the 
revolts  that  broke  out  in  several  cities,  even  in 
Asshur  and  Kalah  itself,  and  ended  in  a  revolution 
which  placed  a  usurper  on  the  throne,  putting  an 
end  to  a  line  of  kings,  which,  if  a  very  explicit  state- 
ment in  an  inscription  of  Raman-nirari  III.  has  been 
correctly  interpreted,  traced  its  descent  uninter- 
ruptedly to  the  founder  of  the  Assyrian  monarchy, 
through,  it  would  appear,  something  like  a  thousand 
years.  Of  the  manner  in  which  this  revolution  took 
place,  we  have  unfortunately  not  the  slightest  indi- 
cation.    Political  events   at  home  find    no  place  in 


SHALMANESER  II.  20/ 

the  royal  annals,  for  the  historical  inscriptions  are 
avowedly  composed  for  the  glorification  of  the  re- 
spective monarchs  whose  reigns  they  relate,  and 
would,  in  all  cases,  be  extremely  reticent  on  any 
matter  of  a  disastrous  or  disagreeable  nature.  So 
we  have  no  means  of  knowing  even  who  the  usurper 
was,  whether  only  an  adventurer,  an  ambitious  and 
unscrupulous  general,  like  Omri  and  Jehu  and  Haz- 
ael,  and  almost  all  the  Oriental  founders  of  new  dy- 
nasties, or  a  pretender  at  least  collaterally  connect- 
ed with  the  ancient  royal  house.  True,  he  speaks  of 
**  the  kings,  his  fathers,"  but  as  he  never  mentions 
his  own  father  and  grandfather,  the  word  may  stand, 
in  a  not  unusual  Oriental  acception,  for  ''elders" 
or  predecessors,  and  he  may  be  the  son  of  the  old 
Assyrian  kings  after  the  same  fashion  that  all  the 
kings  of  Israel  were  ''  sons  of  Omri."  However  that 
may  be,  one  thing  is  sure,  and  that  by  far  the  most 
essential,  that  in  this  usurper  we  have  to  do  with 
one  of  the  mightiest  conquerors  in  history. 

21.  He  reigned  under  the  name,  familiar  from 
the  biblical  history  of  the  Jewish  kings,  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser  II.,  a  name  to  which  he  did  ample  justice, 
whether  it  were  his  own,  or  assumed  at  his  accession, 
as  a  glorious  omen,  or  as  a  declaration  of  the  illus- 
trious model  he  had  proposed  to  himself.  For  it  is 
very  curious  that  this  king's  name  itself  has  for  years 
been  a  subject  of  dispute,  and  an  apparently  hope- 
less problem.  The  confusion  was  caused  by  the 
mention  (Second  Kings,  xv.  19)  of  a  king  of  Assyria, 
Phul  or  PUL,  while  the  same  chapter,  ten  verses 
lower,  speaks   of  Tiglath-Pileser.     Now,   thanks    to 


208  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

the  Eponym  Canon,  we  have  a  complete  and  unas- 
sailable authentic  list  of  the  Assyrian  kings  for  this 
whole  period,  and  in  the  number  there  is  no  Phul, 
On  the  other  hand,  Berosus  gives  for  this  same  time 
a  Phul  as  king  of  Babylon,  and  the  name  is  re- 
peated by  a  Greek  writer,  corrupted  into  POROS. 
It  was  at  length  proved,  by  chronological  calcula- 
tions and  various  circumstantial  evidence,  that  the 
two  were  one.  Tiglath-Pileser  did  conquer  Baby- 
lonia, and  assume  the  full  title  of  the  Babylonian 
kings.  For  what  reason  he  should  have  been  in- 
scribed on  the  royal  list  there  under  a  different  name 
from  that  he  bore  as  Assyrian  monarch,  is  what  has 
never  been  found  out.  One  explanation  suggested 
is  that  Phul  was  his  own  original  name,  and  the 
other  an  assumed  one. 

22.  If  one  set  of  important  events  affecting  the 
people  of  Israel — the  first  Syrian  league,  the  battle  of 
Karkar  and  Jehu's  tribute — is  missing  in  the  Jewish 
historical  books  that  have  come  down  to  us,  there  is 
another,  affecting  Assyria,  given  at  length  in  the 
Bible  and  unrecorded  on  the  monuments;  it  is  the 
journey  of  the  prophet  Jonah  to  Nineveh  and  his 
preaching  there.  It  is  difficult  to  know  just  what 
to  make  of  the  narrative.  It  seems  such  a  strange 
thing  for  a  Jew  to  do,  especially  as  it  never  was  the 
Jews'  wont  to  go  out  of  their  way  for  the  spiritual 
welfare  of  any  other  people.  In  other  respects,  the 
incongruity  is  perhaps  not  as  great  as  at  first  sight 
appears.  Jonah's  date — this  side  of  800  B.C. — coin- 
cides with  the  disastrous  period  of  weakness  and 
intestine  troubles  which  immediately  precedes  the 


SHALMANESER  II. 


209 


second  Tiglath-Pileser,  when  the  monarchy  itself 
seemed  threatened  with  dissolution.  Then,  the  pro- 
clamation of  a  public  fast  and  penance  in  times  of 
national  danger  and  calamity  is  not  incompatible 
with  the  Assyro-Babylonian,  nor  indeed  with  the 
spirit  of  any  Semitic  religion,  and  we  know  of  other 
cases.  Also,  the  Assyrians  had  prophets  or  ''  seers," 
in  whom  they  placed  much  faith.  Lastly,  the  very 
fable  which  is  such  a  stumbling-block  to  the  intelli- 
gent reading  of  the  whole  book  becomes  most  un- 
expectedly cleared  of  its  hitherto  impenetrable  ob- 
scurity, when  Assyriology  informs  us  that  the  Assy- 
rian name  of  the  ''  great  city  "  is  NiNUA,  a  word  very 
like  NUNU,  which  means  ''FISH";  the  connection 
being  moreover  indicated  by  the  oldest  sign  for 
the  rendering  of  the  name  in  writing,  which  is  a  com- 
bination of  lines  or  wedges  plainly  representing   a 


fish  in  a  basin  or  tank,  thus:    ^"I  ^J^S-^I    The 


origin  of  both  name  and  figure  are  as  yet  un- 
explained, so  much  only  being  suggested,  that 
they  must  be  in  some  way  connected  with  the 
Semitic  and  still  more  Canaanitic  fish-myth  (see 
p.  Ill  and  p.  114),  and  the  consequent  sacred- 
ness  of  fishes.  However  that  be,  enough  is  ap- 
parent to  suggest  a  solution  of  the  whale  story. 
The  big  fish  that  swallowed  Jonah  was  no  other 
than  Nineveh,  the  Fish-City  itself,  where  he  must 
surely  have  been  sufficiently  encompassed  by  dan- 
ger to   warrant   his  desperate   cry  for    deliverance. 


2 1  o  THE  S  TOR  Y  OF  A  SS  YRIA . 

in  a  strain  that  forcibly  recalls  the  old  '*  pen- 
itential psalms"  of  Shumir  and  Accad.^  The 
whole  extraordinary  story  thus  assumes  its  proper 
character,  that  of  an  Oriental  parable,  somewhat  ex- 
ceptionally high  in  color,  it  is  true,  and  adorned  with 
foreign  additions,  but  t/iat  came  from  repeated  tell- 
ings, and  possibly  in  the  final  writing  down,  the  scribe 
who  did  so  being  probably  ignorant  of  the  myth  un- 
derlying the  original  parable.  Hence  the  attempted 
flight  in  a  ship — to  account  for  the  prophet's  getting 
into  the  fish's  belly  at  all.  Furthermore,  we  have 
seen  that  local  tradition  has  attached  the  memory 
and  name  of  the  prophet  to  one  of  the  mounds 
which  contain  the  ruined  palaces  and  temples  of 
Nineveh  (Nebbi  Yunus  f).  But  then  that  tradition 
Is  probably  to  be  ascribed  to  the  Arabs  and  Turks, 
since  the  Mussulmans  know  the  biblical  prophets 
and  hold  them  in  honor.  Altogether  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  book  of  Jonah  is  in  many  ways 
puzzling.:}: 

23.  Before  passing  over  to  the  second  and  more 
tragic  phase  of  the  conflict  between  Asshur  and 
Israel,  a  conflict  which  this  time  directly  involved 
the    Phoenician  cities,   let     us   pause    to   record   an 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  177-179. 

t  See  lower,  p.  341  ;  also  "  Story  of- Chaldea,"  p.  49. 

X  This  solution  of  the  famous  Jonah  story  was  suggested  to  the 
author  by  a  passage  in  Fr.  Lenormant's '*  Legende  de  Semiramis," 
and  is  offered  only  as  a  suggestion,  which  it  were  desirable,  however, 
to  pursue  and  develop  until  a  thorough  research  either  confirmed  it 
or  proved  it  to  be  erroneous.  If  confirmed,  it  would  certainly  do 
^way  with  a  huge  and  puzzling  incongruity. 


SHALMANESER  II.  2  1 1 

event  which,  though  of  little  immediate  impor- 
tance, is  forever  memorable  from  the  consequences 
that  were  to  arise  from  it  in  a  not  very  remote 
future  :  this  is  the  founding  of  a  city  on  the  northern 
shore  of  Africa  by  a  Tyrian  colony,  in  814  B.C.,  the 
tenth  year  of  Shamshi-Raman,  the  successor  of 
Shalmaneser  II.     There  had  been  a  rev- 

-T-  ^T^  Founda- 

olution  in  Tyre.     Two  children,  the  boy,    tionofCar- 

^  ^  J  ^      thage,  814 

Pygmalion,   and    his    somewhat    older  b.c. 

sister,  Elissa,  were  left  joint  possessors  of  the 
throne,  the  power  virtually  belonging  to  their 
uncle,  the  high-priest  of  Baal-Melkarth,  to  whom 
Elissa  had  been  married  by  her  father.  When 
Pygmalion  grew  up,  he  rebelled  against  this  tute- 
lage, and  having  the  people  on  his  side,  put  his 
uncle  to  death  and  proclaimed  himself  sole  king. 
Elissa  then,  accompanied  by  a  number  of  her  hus- 
band's followers,  presumably  older  men  of  noble 
families,  seized  on  ships  which  were  lying  in  the 
harbor  ready  to  sail,  put  to  sea,  and  landing  on  the 
northern  coast  of  Africa,  at  a  point  where  there 
were  already  Phoenician  settlements,  some  pros- 
perous, some  decayed  and  deserted,  founded  on 
the  site  of  one  of  the  latter,  a  city  which,  famous 
under  its  corrupted  name  of  Carthage,  would 
scarcely  be  recognized  under  its  original  one  of 
Kart-HadascHT  (*'  New  City  ").  This  whole  story, 
being  transmitted  through  Greek  channels,  is  any- 
thing but  authentic  in  the  details.  The  names  are 
both  Greek,  not  Semitic,  in  form,  and  the  narrative 
has  been  worked  over  again  and  again  by  Western 
poets,  till  the  Tyrian  princess  somehow  exchangecj 


2 1 2  THE  STOR  Y  OF  ASSYRIA. 

her  first  name  for  another,  that  of  DiDO,  under 
which  she  became  a  standing  character  of  ancient 
fiction.  In  point  of  historical  fact,  however,  the 
two  soHd  landmarks  remain:  there  was  a  revolution 
in  Tyre,  and,  in  consequence  thereof,  a  colony  de- 
parted and  founded  this  African  city,  Tyre's  last- 
born  but  most  illustrious  daughter.  As  for  the 
name  of  the  foundress,  Elissa,  it  may  very  possibly 
have  been  an  eponymi  for  all  those  regions,  colon- 
ized from  Phoenicia,  which  the  Bible  calls  Elishah, 
and  which  may  have  included,  besides  Greek 
islands  and  coast  tracts,  also  the  not  very  distant 
settlements  on  the  northern  point  of  Africa. 


APPENDIX  TO  CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   STELE   OF   MESHA   THE    MOABITE. 

The  destinies  of  Moab,  like  those  of  all  the  small 
states  and  principalities  that  form  the  group  of 
Palestine,  lie  too  much  outside  the  orbit  of  Assyria  to 
be  introduced  separately  or  at  any  length  in  the  great 
historical  drama  of  which  that  country  has  the 
title  part.  In  that  drama  they  have  a  place  in  so 
far  only  as  they  come  in  contact  or  collision  with 
the  chief  actor.  The  Jewish  kingdoms  themselves 
would  make  no  exception,  were  it  not  for  the  peculiar 
interest  which  attaches  to  them  for  us,  and  which 
makes  us  refer  to  them  principally  the  events  in 
which,  to  an  indifferent  eye,  they  played  in  reality 
but  a  subordinate  part.  As  it  is,  Israel  and  Judah 
must  always  take  in  a  history  of  Assyria  a  promi- 


SIIALMANESER  II,  2 1  3 

nent  place,  which  would  be  disproportionate,  but 
for  their  importance  on  other  than  strictly  political 
grounds. 

Not  so  with  Moab.  Yet  one  monument,  discov- 
ered about  twenty  years  ago,  has  given  it  a  claim  to 
attention.  It  is  a  stone  in  the  shape  of  a  stele,  cov- 
ered with  a  long  inscription,  which  seems  to  have 
been  set  up  by  King  Mesha,  in  memory  of  his  coun- 
try's deliverance  from  the  rule  of  Israel,  to  whom 
it  had  been  subject  and  had  paid  tribute  for  about 
forty  years.  Moab,  like  Edom  and  some  other  na- 
tions of  Palestine,  was  so  nearly  akin  to  the  He- 
brews in  race  as  to  speak  the  same  language,  so  the 
inscription  *'  is  written  in  the  Moabite  dialect,  i.  c,  in 
a  language  which  is,  with  slight  difference,  that  of 
the  Bible.  .  .  .  The  characters  are  the  ancient  He- 
brew characters,  the  so-called  Samaritan  or  Phoe- 
nician ones.""^  It  is  not  only  the  oldest  Hebrew 
literary  monument  in  existence,  but  the  most  an- 
cient specimen  of  alphabet  writing.  The  stele  was 
standing,  half  buried  in  the  ground,  at  the  foot  of  a 
hill  by  the  side  of  Dibon,  the  ancient  capital  of 
Moab,  and  was  unfortunately  broken  in  the  dig- 
ging, so  that  it  had  to  be  patched  out  of  twenty 
pieces,  and  the  surface  was  so  badly  injured  that 
half  the  writing  would  have  been  irrecoverably  lost 
had  not  the  discoverer  had  the  forethought  of  or- 
dering a  stamping  to  be  taken  before  the  stele  was 
removed.     This  enabled  the  scholars  at  the  Louvre, 


*  Vigouroux,  "  La  Bible  et  les  Decouvertes  Modernes,"  Vol.  IV., 
P-59- 


^S. — THE    "  MESH  A    STEIK-" 


^HALMANESER  It. 


215 


where  it  now  stands,  to  complete  the  text  by  repro- 
ducing the  lost  parts  on  a  layer  of  plaster  applied 
on  the  damaged  portions  of  the  surface.  The  dif- 
ference shows  very  clearly. 

But  great  as  is  the  philological  importance  of 
this  *'  find,"  its  historical  contents  are  at  least  as  in- 
teresting. The  inscription  relates  to  a  time  and  to 
events  so  familiar  from  Bible  history,  that  a  Sun- 
day-school child  who  knew  its  lesson  well  would 
have  no  trouble  in  placing  it,  and  connecting  it  with 
the  story  told  in  Second  Kings,  iii.,  the  tragical  end 
of  w^hich  was  given  in  a  preceding  chapter.  (See 
p.  127.)  There  we  are  informed  that  *'  Mesha,  king 
of  Moab,  was  a  sheepmaster,  and  he  rendered  unto 
the  king  of  Israel  the  wool  of  an  hundred  thousand 
lambs  and  of  an  hundred  thousand  rams.  But  it 
came  to  pass  when  Ahab  was  dead  that  the  king  of 
Moab  rebelled  against  the  king  of  Israel."  Then 
we  read,  in  a  vivid  narrative,  how  the  kings  of  Israel 
and  Judah  joined  their  forces  against  Moab,  and 
pressed  it  sorely,  and  how  King  Mesha,  in  the  hour 
of  despair,  resorted  to  the  last  horrible  appeal  of 
the  Canaanitic  religions  and  sacrificed  his  eldest 
son, — to  Khemosh,  the  god  of  Moab,  although  the 
name  is  not  given, — and  how  the  Israelites  were 
seized  with  a  great  horror  and  departed  to  their 
own  land.  It  is  this  crreat  deliverance  which  he 
celebrates  in  his  inscription,  but  without  mention- 
ing at  what  price  he  bought  it. 

"  I  am  Mesha,  the  son  of  Khemoshgad  the  Dibonite.     My  father 
reigned  over  Moab  thirty  years,  and  I  reigned  after  my  father,  and 


2 1 6  THE  SrOR  Y  OE  ASS  YRtA. 

erected  this  sanctuary  to  Khemosh  in  Karkha  *  .  .  .  .  because  he 
assisted  me  against  all  my  foes,  and  let  me  feast  my  eyes  on  all  my 
haters. — Omri,  the  king  of  Israel,  oppressed  Moab  many  days,  for  Khe- 
mosh was  wroth  with  his  land.  And  his  son  followed  him,  and  he 
also  spake  :  I  will  oppress  Moab.  In  my  days  he  spoke  thus,  and  I 
feasted  my  heart  on  him  and  his  house.  And  Omri  had  taken  pos- 
session of  the  land  Medeba  and  dwelt  in  it  ...  .  the  days  of  his 
son,  forty  years.  And  Khemosh  restored  it  in  my  days.  And  the  men  of 
Gad  had  dwelt  in  the  land  Atarot  from  of  old.  And  the  king  of  Is- 
rael had  built  Oltarot  for  hhnself.  And  I  fought  against  the  city,  and 
took  it  and  slew  all  ....  to  rejoice  the  eyes  of  Khemosh  and  Moab 
,  .  .  And  Khemosh  spoke  to  ?ne  :  Go,  take  Nebo  fro7n  Israel.  And  I  went 
at  night,  and  fought  against  it  from  the  rising  of  the  morning  dawn 
until  midday,  and  I  took  it  and  slew  all,  7000  ....  women  .... 
and  maidens  I  consecrated  to  Khemosh's  Ashtoreth "  (or  "  to 
Kemosh,  Ashtoreth  " .?),  "  and  I  took  thence  the  vessels  of  Yahveh 
and  dragged  before  Khemosh.  .  .  . 

"  And  I  built  Karkha.  ...  I  built  its  gates  and  its  towers.  And 
I  built  the  royal  palace.  .  .  .  And  there  was  not  a  cistern  inside  the 
city  in  Karkha.  Then  I  spoke  to  all  the  people  :  "  Make  each  a 
cistern  in  your  houses.  ..." 

Then  follow  more  constructions.  The  last  intel- 
ligible fragment  is:  ^' KJiemosJi  spoke  to  me :  Go  down, 
fight  against  Khoronan,  and  I  .  .  .  .  Khemosh  in  my 
days.  .  .  ."  The  inscription  breaks  off  at  the  thirty- 
fourth  line. 

The  similarity  of  this  inscription  to  the  Assyrian 
ones  in  manner  and  spirit  is  almost  too  striking  to 
be  pointed  out.  But  it  reminds  one  at  least  as 
strongly  of  countless  passages  in  the  Bible.     Substi- 


*  The  discoverer  of  the  stele,  Mr.  Clermont  Ganneau,  thinks  that 
"  Karkha,  mountain  and  city  in  one,  is  the  Sion  of  Dibon,  the  Moab- 
ite  Jerusalem  ;  it  is  the  city  of  Mesha,  which  contains  the  temple  of 
Khemosh  and  the  citadel.  I  cannot  make  my  meaning  clearer  than  by 
likening  Dibon  to  Rome,  Karkha  to  the  Capitol,  and  the  sanctuary  of 
Khemosh  to  the  temple  of  Jupiter  Capitolinus." 


SHALMANESER  /I. 


217 


tutc  '' Yahvch  "  for  *'  Khemosh  "  in  any  of  the  pas- 
sages given  in  italics,  and  the  name  of  Edom  or 
Ammon  or  any  of  Israel's  enemies  for  that  of  Israel, 
— and  they  might  be  written  by  the  most  ardent 
Hebrew  monotheist.  In  the  same  manner  likewise 
the  Assyrian  speaks  of  Asshur, — a  distinctively  Sem- 
itic relation  to  the  Supreme  Deity.  (Compare  pp. 
II,  12.) 


VIL 

THE   SECOND   EMPIRE. — SIEGE   OF   SAMARIA. 

"  Ah,  the  uproar  of  many  peoples,  which  roar  like  the  roaring  of 
the  seas  !  And  the  rushing  of  nations,  that  rush  like  the  rushing  of 
rtiany  waters!  .  .  .  Behold  the  Lord  bringeth  up  upon  them  the  waters 
of  the  River,  strong  and  many,  even  the  king  of  Assyria  and  all  his 
glory ;  and  he  shall  come  up  over  all  his  channels,  and  go  over  all  his 
banks :  and  he  shall  sweep  onward  into  Judah ;  he  shall  overflow  and 
pass  through ;  he  shall  reach  even  to  the  neck  ;  and  the  stretching 
out  of  his  wings  shall  fill  the  breadth  of  thy  land.'' — Isaiah. 

I.  The  prophet  Isaiah,  when  he  described  the 
career  of  an  Assyrian  conqueror  in  such  magnificent 
m-  1  .-..  -r,.     poetry,  likening  it  to  that  of  Asshur's  own 

Tiglath  Pi-    i^  -^  '  fc> 

7^45^727  Euphrates  in  high  flood  time,  spoke  of 
B.C.  what  liis  eyes  were  sorrowfully  beholding 

almost  every  year.  And  not  of  one  king  only  might 
he  have  thus  spoken,  but  of  four,  whose  contempo- 
rary he  was,  mighty  conquerors  all  of  them,  for  As- 
syria was  now  reaching  the  noonday  zenith  of  her 
greatness,  that  giddy  point  of  excessive  elevation  on 
which  no  mortal  thing  can  do  more  than  remain 
poised  a  little  while,  to  descend  almost  immediately, 
oftener  headlong  than  by  slow  degrees.  That  point 
she  undoubtedly  attained  under  the  second  Tiglath- 
Pileser,  who,  while  quite  as  much  the  robber,  had 
more  of  the  statesman  than  his  predecessors,  and 
greatly  changed  the  character  of  the  Assyrian  power. 

218 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


219 


2.  *' The  accession  of  Tiglath-Pilcscr  II.,"  says  an 
eminent  historian,'^'  "  marks  a  turning-point  in  the 
history  of  Western  Asia.  His  first  task  was  to 
regain  the  position  held  by  his  predecessors,  but 
much  impaired  since  in  many  ways,  and  especially 
by  the  Alarodians  ;  but  he  went  far  beyond  that. 
While  the  Assyrian  kings  had  hitherto  virtually 
contented  themselves  with  the  subjection  of  Mes- 
opotamia and  the  lands  of  Nairi,  and  only  plun- 
dered or  raised  tribute  on  remoter  territories,  like 
Babylonia  and  Syria,  the  new  ruler  began  systemat- 
ically to  build  up  a  great  political  empire." 

"  This  second  empire,"  to  borrow  the  words  of  another  eminent 
Assyrian  scholar,  Professor  Sayce,t  differed  essentially  from  the 
first.  The  usurper  was  an  organizer  as  well  as  a  conqueror,  and 
sought,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  Western  Asia,  to  give  his 
conquests  a  consolidated  and  permanent  character.  The  conquered 
provinces  were  no  longer  loosely  connected  with  the  central  power 
by  the  payment  of  tribute,  which  was  refused  as  soon  as  the  Assyrian 
armies  were  out  of  sight  ;  nor  were  the  campaigns  undertaken  by  the 
kings  of  Nineveh  mere  raids,  whose  chief  objects  were  prestige  and 
plunder.  They  were  made  with  a  purpose,  and  in  pursuance  of  a 
definite  line  of  policy,  and,  once  made,  they  were  tenaciously  pre- 
served. The  conquered  nations  became  subject  provinces,  governed, 
wherever  possible,  by  Assyrian  satraps  (governors),  while  turbulent 
populations  were  deported  to  some  distant  parts  of  the  empire.  Each 
province  and  capital  city  had  its  annual  contribution  to  the  imperial 
treasury  fixed  and  regulated,  and  centralization  superseded  the  loose 
union  of  mutually  hostile  states  and  towns.  .  .  .  The  second  Assy- 
rian empire  was  essentially  a  commercial  one.  It  was  founded  and 
maintained  for  the  purpose  of  attracting  the  trade  and  wealth  of 
Western  Asia  into  Assyrian  hands.  ..." 

3.  Accordingly,  two  novel  features  strike  us  in  the 


*  Ed.  Meyer,  "  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,"  p.  446,  §  365. 
t  A.  H.  Sayce,  "  Herodotus,"  p.  376. 


220 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


second  Tiglath-Pileser's  inscriptions.  The  formula 
for  announcing  a  conquest  is  no  longer,  "  The  land 
So-and-so  I  plundered,  I  devastated  the  whole  of  it," 
but  ^*To  the  boundaries  of  Asshur  I  added,"  i.  e.,  I 
annexed.  Asshurnazirpal  had  made  a  beginning  in 
this  direction,  and  occasionally  mentions  appointing 


39. — FLOCKS   AND   CAPTIVE   WOMEN   CARRIED   AWAY. 

a  governor  over  a  conquered  city  or  district.  The 
difference  is  that  what  was  formerly  done  occasion- 
ally was  now  done  systematically.  The  same  king 
had  in  some  instances  transported  part  of  a  conquer- 
ed but  unsafe  population  into  Assyria  (see  p.  159)^ 
but  Tiglath-Pileser  introduced  such  deportations  on 
principle,  and  carried  them  out  on  an  astounding  scale. 
On  an  average,  a  fourth  of  every  subjugated  popula- 


Ui 

a 

Q 

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I— I 
H 

< 


o 


221 


222  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

tion  may  be  assumed  to  have  been  transferred  either 
into  Assyria  proper  or  into  remote  provinces  and  de- 
pendencies of  the  empire,  while  their  place  was  filled 
with  Assyrian  families  or,  at  least,  with  people  from 
kindred  and  loyal  districts.  That  the  object  was  to 
effect  a  general  fusion  of  races,  and  obtain,  in  time, 
uniformly  submissive  and  contented  subjects,  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  deportations  of  thousands 
of  women  are  specially  mentioned,  who  could  not 
possibly  be  sent  into  the  middle  of  Assyria  except 
for  the  purpose  of  being  there  married  and  settled, 
and  bringing  up  a  generation  which,  from  their 
mixed  origin,  should  be  free  from  very  decided  pa- 
triotic leanings — unless,  indeed,  to  the  country  of 
their  birth.  Such  deportations  en  masse,  being  a 
measure  of  policy,  not  of  punishment,  and  one  which 
generally  took  place  after  the  full  measure  of  chas- 
tisement had  been  meted  out  to  a  rebellious  prov- 
ince or  resisting  city,  do  not  appear  to  have  been 
carried  out  in  a  spirit  of  wanton  cruelty  and  humil- 
iation. The  sculptures  of  the  second  empire  show 
us  many  scenes  bearing  on  this  strange  accompani- 
ment of  war:  we  see  women,  with  their  children 
and  household  goods,  riding  on  asses,  or  on  chariots 
drawn  by,  probably,  their  own  teams  of  ploughing 
oxen,  the  men  walking  indeed,  but  seldom  fettered, 
the  flocks  and  baggage  carts  following,  the  whole 
escorted  and  superintended,  of  course,  by  Assyrian 
warriors.  Such  processions  are  very  different  from 
those  of  prisoners  led  before  the  king  after  a  battle 
or  capture  of  a  city,  their  feet  in  chains,  their  arms 
bound  behind  their  backs  at  the  elbows,  their  cap- 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


223 


tors  driving  them  on  with  uplifted  stick  or  spear- 
shaft. 

4.  Another  feature  of  the  new  poHcy  inaugurated 
by  Tiglath-Pileser  II.  is  that  the  kings  entrust  many 
of  their  expeditions  to  experienced  generals,  whom 
we  may  well  suppose  to  have  been  their  own  tried 
companions  in  arms,  trained  in  all  the  branches 
of  higher  military  tactics,  Shalmaneser  II.,  it  is 
true,  did  not  often  take  the  field  himself  in  the 
seven  last  years  of  his  life,  but  sent  out  his  general, 
whose  name  he  frequently  mentions  with  respect 
and  praise.  But  it  was  not  until  nearly  thirty  years 
of  unintermitting  marching  and  fighting  must  have 
broken  the  old  warrior's  strength  that  he  resigned 
his  staff  of  command,  while  he  himself  sat  down  at 
Kalah  to  attend  to  his  buildings  and  inscriptions. 
Now,  however,  the  Turtan  (general-in-chief)  appears 
in  the  very  beginning  of  the  new  reign,  and  hence- 
forth comes  to  the  front  more  and  more  frequently. 
The  boundaries  of  the  Empire,  as  they  widened  on 
all  sides,  were  becoming  more  insecure,  and  if  ag- 
gressive warfare  was  carried  into  the  neighboring 
countries,  it  was  often  only  as  a  more  dignified,  and, 
on  the  whole,  safer  and  more  profitable  form  of 
self-defence,  the  choice  mostly  being  between  invad- 
ing and  being  invaded.  Thus  military  expeditions 
had  to  be  incessantly  and  vigorously  pushed  to 
so  many  points  at  once  that  the  presence  of  the 
sovereign  at  all  became  out  of  the  question,  and 
they  were  compelled  to  concentrate  their  own  per- 
sonal efforts  against  those  which  were  of  most  im- 
portance in  the  general  scheme  of  their  policy. 


224  '^^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

5.  Now,  in  this  scheme,  by  far  the  most  essential 
item  was  the  entire  subjugation  of  the  West — the 
vast  region  between  the  Euphrates  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean, bounded  on  the  north  by  the  Taurus  and 
Amanos  ranges,  and  towards  the  south  losing  itself 
indefinitely  in  the  sandy  wastes  which  finally  touch 
upon  Arabia  and  Egypt.  The  immediate  and  mate- 
rial incentive  of  securing,  in  the  shape  of  tribute 
and  plunder,  the  immense  wealth  of  that  peerless 
cluster  of  ancient  and  highly  cultured  states,  sweep- 
ingly  designated  as  Syria,  Phoenicia  and  Palestine, 
was  equalled  by  the  more  statesmanlike  desire  of 
controlling  the  great  commercial  highroad  so  often 
referred  to,  while  beyond  Egypt  opened  a  flattering 
vista  of  still  further  conquests  and  booty — which, 
however,  may  not  yet  have  been  distinctly  contem- 
plated at  this  period.  Egypt  herself,  at  all  events, 
felt  the  danger,  and,  by  an  aggressive  bearing, 
wholly  out  of  keeping  with  her  now  rapidly  waning 
power,  angered  the  full-grown  northern  lion  and 
probably  hastened  the  very  fate  which  she  feebly 
labored  to  avert. 

6.  Like  Shalmaneser  II.,  Tiglath-Pileser  first 
cleared  the  way  for  his  Syrian  campaigns  by  secur- 
ing himself  from  attacks  in  the  rear  and  on  the  flanks, 
and  dealing  out  to  his  neighbors  of  Urartu,  the 
Zagros  and  Chaldea  enough  punishment  to  keep 
them  quiet  at  least  for  a  few  years.  Babylonia  was 
reduced  to  the  condition  of  an  avowedly  vassal 
state,  and  the  Assyrian  king,  for  the  first  time  since 
Tukulti-Nineb's  temporary  conquest,  could  again 
call  himself  by  the  ancient  titles  of  ''  King  of  Shu- 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


225 


mir  and  Accad  *'  and  ''King  of  Kar-Dunyash  " — 
titles  which  his  successors  retained  to  the  end  of  the 
northern  monarchy.  The  princes  of  Kaldu  were 
subdued  for  awhile  by  a  rapid  and  successful  inroad, 
and  by  the  execution  of  one  of  their  number  before 
his  own  city  gates.  Some  Aramaean  tribes,  too, 
which  had  for  some  time  back  been  settling  along 
the  Euphrates  in  the  southern  part  of  Babylonia 
and  were  inclined  to  be  troublesome,  were  energetic- 
ally put  down,  a  certain  number  of  families  being 
transferred  to  other  parts  of  the  empire.  In  the 
East,  the  mountain  tribes  of  the  Zagros  were  made 
innocuous  for  some  time  to  come  by  an  invasion 
which  penetrated  further  into  the  highlands  than 
any  preceding  one,  and  even  seems  to  have  pierced 
through  the  sevenfold  range  into  the  country  be- 
yond, held  by  tribes  of  Medes.  This  campaign 
brought  the  Assyrian  army  as  far  as  the  foot  of  a 
high  mountain  which  the  monuments  call  BiKNIj 
which  it  has  as  yet  proved  impossible  to  identify 
with  any  degree*  of  certainty.  The  conduct  of  this 
expedition,  begun  by  the  king  himself,  was  made 
over  to  his  Turtan,  his  personal  presence  being  more 
needed  in  the  North,  where  he  now  marched  against 
the  kingdom  of  Van,  so  dangerously  increased  in 
power  and  influence  that  it  actually  had  organized 
a  league  of  the — probably  kindred — highland  chief- 
tains so  often  collectively  spoken  of  as  "  Kings  of 
Nairi,"  and  even,  it  would  appear,  had  secured  the 
co-operation  of  some  princes  of  Northern  Syria, 
especially  the  important  and  wealthy  city  and  prin- 
cipality of  Arpad.  This  Armenian  campaign  was 
IS 


It 
I 


226  THE  STQRY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

SO  far  successful  that  Tiglath-Pileser  drove  back 
the  troops  of  the  Urartian,  pursued  them  into  their 
fastnesses  farther  than  any  of  his  predecessors,  and 
so  effectually  frightened  minor  kings  that  they 
obediently  returned  under  the  yoke,  and  the  Alaro- 
dian  coalition  dispersed.  But  the  royal  capital  by 
Lake  Van  was  not  taken  yet,  as  Tiglath-Pileser  could 
not  spare  the  time  just  then  for  a  long  and  difficult 
siege.  So  he  contented  himself  with  erecting  "  an 
image  of  his  royalty"  in  view  of  the  city  gates — 
as  a  reminder  and  a  warning. 

7.  These  preliminary  operations  took  up  three 
years,  and  the  results,  though  on  the  whole  satisfac- 
tory, were  not  particularly  brilliant,  as  nothing  very 
decisive  was  accomplished  in  any  direction.  The 
next  years  the  king  devoted  exclusively  to  his  enter- 
prise against  the  western  countries,  which  required 
considerable  perseverance,  since  the  city  of  Arpad 
alone  delayed  him  three  years.  When  that  siege 
was  ended,  things  progressed  more  rapidly,  but  it 
was  not  till  the  fifth  year  of  the  expedition  that 
the  northern  portion  of  Syria,  i.  e.,  the  entire  valley 
of  the  Orontes,  and  the  corresponding  sea-coast,  was 
virtually  annexed  to  the  Assyrian  Empire,  in  token 
whereof  ereat  numbers  of  the  inhabitants  were 
transferred  into  some  of  the  loyal  Nairi  districts, 
while  Aramaeans  from  Babylonia  were  brought  to 
take  their  place.  In  the  same  year  the  other 
Syrian  princes,  whose  hour  had  not  struck  yet,  sent 
tribute  and  paid  their  court.  We  find  on  the  list 
the  kings  of  Damascus,  of  Karkhemish,  of  Hamath, 
Tyre,  Gebal  (Byblos),  a  queen  of  Arabia— probably 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE.  227 

of  some  northern  districts  adjoining  the  Syrian  des- 
ert— and,  lastly,  a  familiar-sounding  name :  Tribute  of 
MiNIHIMMI  IR  SAMIRINA,  i.  e.,  MENA-  ^{Sl^i^§s 
HEM  OF  THE  CiTY  OF  SaMARIA,  the  then  ^-^' 

reigning  king  of  Israel.  This  Menahem,  having 
obtained  the  throne  by  the  not  unusual  means  of 
murdering  its  occupant,  had  just  come  out  of  a 
civil  war,  and  therefore  did  not  feel  very  secure. 
So  he  bethought  him  of  buying  the  protection  of 
the  conqueror,  and  gave  him  a  thousand  talents  of 
silver,  ''that  his  hand  might  be  with  him  to  confirm 
the  kingdom  in  his  hand.  And  Menahem  exacted 
the  tribute  of  Israel,  even  of  all  the  mighty  men  of 
wealth  "  (Second  Kings,  xv.  19-20.  This  is  the  place 
where  Tiglath-Pileser  is  called  Phul). 

8.  The  hundred  years  which  had  elapsed  between 
the  submission  of  the  usurper  Jehu,  the  murderer  of 
Omri's  grandsons,  and  that  of  the  other  usurper, 
Menahem,  had  been  a  century  of  decline  for  both 
the  Jewish  kingdoms.  That  of  Israel  was  the  first 
to  suffer.  "  In  those  days  "  (of  Jehu),  pithily  sums 
up  the  biblical  historian  (Second  Kings,  x.  32), 
"  Yahveh  began  to  cut  from  Israel."  Moab,  after 
King  Mesha's  dearly-bought  success  in  the  war 
of  deliverance  (see  p.  126),  had  again  become  a 
formidable  neighbor  and  harassed  them  in  the 
south-east  ;  but  their  most  ruthless  foes  were  the 
kings  of  Damascus.  Hazael  and  his  son,  Ben- 
HADAD  III.,  gradually  conquered  and  annexed  al- 
most the  whole  country  east  of  the  Jordan — the 
rich,  hilly  woodland  and  pasture  lands  of  Gilead 
and  Bashan,     Of  all  the  might  which  had  enabled 


228  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

Ahab  to  send  so  great  a  force  into  the  field  (see 
pp.  126-127),  nothing  was  left  but  50  horsemen, 
10  chariots,  and  10, OCX)  footmen  :  ''  for  the  king 
of  Syria  destroyed  them  and  made  them  like  dust 
in  the  threshing"  (Second  Kings,  xiii.  7).  The 
same  fate  would  have  befallen  Judah,  but  that  the 
king  bought  off  Hazael,  when  he  already  had  "  set 
his  face  to  go  up  to  Jerusalem  :  "  he  "  took  all  the 
hallowed  things  that  his  fathers,  kings  of  Judah, 
had  dedicated,  and  his  own  hallowed  things,  and 
all  the  gold  that  was  found  in  the  treasures  of  the 
house  of  the  Lord,  and  of  the  king's  house,  and 
sent  it  to  Hazael,  king  of  Syria ;  and  he  went  away 
from  Jerusalem"  (Second  Kings,  xii.  18).  But  the 
fate  from  which  the  king  of  Judah  had  saved  the 
sacred  city  at  such  heavy  cost,  he  drew  on  it  him- 
self at  the  hands  of  the  king  of  Israel,  whom  he 
unwisely  and  gratuitously  provoked  into  a  war 
which  ended  most  disastrously  for  himself.  "  Judah 
was  put  to  the  worse  before  Israel,  and  they  fled 
every  man  to  his  tent."  The  king  of  Judah  himself 
was  made  captive  ;  the  king  of  Israel  entered  Jeru- 
salem by  a  breach  made  in  the  city  wall,  ''and  he 
took  all  the  gold  and  silver,  and  all  the  vessels  that 
were  found  in  the  house  of  the  Lord  and  in  the  treas- 
ures of  the  king's  house,  the  hostages  also,  and  re- 
turned to  Samaria "  (Second  Kings,  xiv.  14).  It 
strikes  one  as  a  little  singular  that  there  should  have 
been  so  much  to  take,  after  we  have  just  been  told 
that  all  had  been  taken  out  of  both  temple  and  royal 
treasure-house  to  be  given  to  the  king  of  Syria. 
This  only  shows  that  one  must  be  cautious  in  dealing 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE.  22Q 

with  Oriental  phraseology  and  not  accept  sweeping 
statements  without  mental  reservations. 

9.  Those  were  dreary  times  for  both  Jewish  states 
which,  not  content  with  the  wars  they  had  to  sup- 
port unceasingly  against  all  their  surrounding  neigh- 
bors, could  not  keep  the  peace  with  each  other,  so 
great  was  their  ever-increasing  mutual  hatred  and 
jealousy.  But  Judah,  at  least,  with  the  exception  of 
an  occasional  family  tragedy  and  family  conspiracy, 
enjoyed  some  measure  of  internal  security  under 
the  unchanging  rule  of  the  House  of  David,  while 
Israel,  founded  by  an  adventurer,  was  fated  from 
the  first  to  be  the  prize  of  any  hand  bold  enough 
to  seize  the  crown,  and  at  this  period  had  finally 
plunged  into  a  tangle  of  lawlessness  and  civil 
strife,  to  which  there  was  only  one  possible  end 
— rapid  and  inglorious  dissolution.  And  indeed, 
scarcely  had  Menahem,  soon  after  his  abject  sub- 
mission, rather  suddenly  died  and  his  son  Peka- 
HIAH  ascended  the  throne,  when  the  latter  was  in 
his  turn  murdered  by  "  Pekah,  his  captain,"  son  of 
Remaliah,  who  straightway  made  alliance  with  the 
new  king  of  Syria,  Rezin,  that  they  might  jointly 
fall  on  Judah.  The  king  who  then  reigned  at  Jeru- 
salem was  Ahaz,  very  young  and  newly  come  to 
power.  His  inexperience  may  have  been  an  incen- 
tive to  his  enernies,  who,  moreover,  had  reason  to 
consider  him  as  being  in  the  bad  graces  of  the 
Assyrian  conqueror,  since  the  name  of  the  king  of 
Judah  was  not  among  those  of  the  princes  who  did 
homage  to  him  in  738.  Yet  the  grandfather  of 
Ahaz,  Azariah  (also  called  UzziAH),  is  mentioned 


230 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 


in  an  inscription  as  having  paid  tribute  some  time  dur- 
ing the  long  siege  of  Arpad,  probably  during  the  last 
year  of  his  own  reign.     The  absence  of  Judah  from 
among  the  tribute-paying  countries  must,  therefore, 
have  been  looked  upon  in  the  light  of  a  revolt,  and 
is   the  more   significant,  that   its    immediate  neigh- 
bors, Edom,  Moab,  and  Ammon,  are   also  absent. 
This  seems   to  point    to    some    feeble    attempt   of 
Judah  at  a  temporary  defensive    alliance  with  her 
hereditary  and  unrelenting  foes.     Such  an  attempt 
at  independence  at   that  time,  under  the  very  out- 
stretched wings  of  the  Assyrian  lion,  even  as  they 
""  filled  the  breadth  of  the  land,"  was    sheer  folly. 
The  young  king  of  Judah    understood    this,    ''and 
his   heart  was  moved,  and  the   heart   of  his  people, 
as  the  trees  of  the  forest  are  moved  with  the  wind  " 
(Isaiah,  vii.   2).     But  the  prophet  spoke  comfort  to 
him  in  the  name   of  Yahveh  :   ''  Be  quiet ;  fear  not, 
neither   let  thine   heart   be  faint,  because   of   these 
two  tails  of  firebrands,  for  the  fierce  anger  of  Rezin 
of  Syria  and  of  the  son   of  Remaliah,  saying  let  us 
go  up  against  Judah  and  vex  it,  and  let  us  make  a 
breach  therein  for  us.  .  .  .   It  shall  not  stand,  neither 
shall    it  come    to    pass "  (Isaiah,  viii.  4).     *'  Before 
the  child  "  (who  has  just"  been  born)  "  shall  have 
knowledge  to    cry.   My  father  and   my  mother,  the 
riches  of  Damascus  shall  be  carried  away  before   the 
king  of  Assyria"  (ix.    11-12).     ''The   Lord  will  cut 
off  from  Israel,  head  and  tail,  palm-branch  and  rush 
in   one   day."     So   Ahaz   took   heart,  and    of   many 
pressing  evils  chose  the  least,  and  averted  the  immi- 
nent harm,  at  least  for  the  time  being,  by  imploring 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


231 


the  conqueror's  assistance,  for  Judah  was  sore  beset, 
not  only  by  Israel  and  Syria  in  the  north,  but  by 
Edom  and  the  Philistines  in  the  south.  (See  Second 
Chronicles,  xxviii.  17-18.)  "  So  Ahaz  sent  messen- 
gers to  Tiglath-Pileser,  king  of  Assyria,  saying,  I  am 
thy  servant  and  thy  son  :  come  up  and  save  me  out 
of  the  hand  of  the  king  of  Syria,  and  out  of  the 
hand  of  the  king  of  Israel,  which  rise  up  against  me." 
Such  a  message  would  have  been  wasted  breath, 
unless  weighted  with  great  gifts ;  so  "  Ahaz  took 
the  silver  and  gold"^  that  was  found  in  the  house  of 
the  Lord,  and  in  the  treasures  of  the  king's  house, 
and  sent  it  for  a  present  to  the  king  of  Assyria. 
And  the  king  of  Assyria  hearkened  to  him  " 
(Second  Kings,  xv.  7-9). 

10.  We  are  not  told  where  the  messengers  of 
Ahaz  found  Tiglath-Pileser.  The  last  two  years  he 
had  been  away  in  the  North  and  East,  where  disturb- 
ances in  Urartu  and  the  Zagros  claimed  his  personal 
attention.  Victorious  as  usual,  he  was,  however,  at 
liberty  to  turn  his  mind  once  more  to  the  affairs  of 
the  West,  which  were  shaping  themselves  very  much 
to  his  liking.  This  expedition,  which  all  but  dealt 
Israel  the  long  impending  death-blow,  is  called  in 
the  annotated  Eponym  Canon  ''  To  Philistia,"  prob- 
ably because  the  king  did  pass  through  the  Jewish 
lands  into  those  of  the  Philistines.  Moreover,  the 
description  very  well  covers  what  we  would  mean 
by  saying  '*  To   Palestine."     Israel's  resistance  was 


*  Another  version  (Second    Chronicles,  xxviii.  21)    says,  "a  por- 
tion.''''    This  more  moderate  estimate  must  be  the  true  one. 


232 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


quickly  broken.  Pekah  was  assassinated,  perhaps  for 
having  involved  the  country  in  this  unequal  struggle  ; 
perhaps  for  refusing  to  end  it  by  submission.  At  any 
rate,  the  usurper  who  succeeded  him,  HOSHEA,  for- 
mally acknowledged  himself  as  the  vassal  of  the  king 
of  Assyria,  holding  the  throne  at  his  pleasure  and 
under  him.  Of  this  revolution,  which  surely  took 
place  spontaneously  and  only  sought  the  conquer- 
or's sanction  when  accomplished,  the  Assyrian 
claims  all  the  credit :  "  Pakaha  (Pekah),  their 
king,/  killed,''  he  says;  "  Ausi  (Hoshea)  I  placed 
Hoshea  over  them."     In  the  same  vaunting  spirit 

kin^over^  he  exaggerates  the  completeness  of  his 
trfbute^of  conquest.  "  The  distant  land  of  Bit- 
Judaii^734°^  Khumri .  .  .  .  the  zvhole  of  its  inhabitants, 
■^•^*  with  their  goods,  I   carried  away  to  As- 

shur."  The  biblical  historians  (Second  Kings,  xv.  29) 
specify  several  cities  and  districts,  making  in  all 
about  half  of  Israel,  adding,  however,  in  perfect  ac- 
cordance with  the  inscriptions,  ''and  he  carried  them 
captive  to  Assyria."  There  is  another  tribute-list 
for  this  year  (734  B.C.).  which  includes  all  the  kings 
so  conspicuously  absent  from  that  of  four  years  be- 
fore—Tahuhazi  MAT  Jaudai  (Ahaz  of  Tudah), 
those  of  Amnion,  Moab  and  Edom,  a  document 
sufficiently  eloquent  in  its  bareness.  The  same  list 
contains  the  names  of  the  kings  of  Arvad,  Ascalon 
and  Gaza ;  Tyre  is  omitted  this  time,  and  not  with- 
out reason,  as  we  shall  see.* 

*  This  is  one  of  the  places  where  biblical  chronology  is  hopelessly 
at  variance  with  the  dates  given  by  the  monuments  and  the  Eponym 
Canon.     The  compiler  of  the  Book  of  Kings  says  that  Pekah  reigned 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


233 


II.  Having  delivered  Ahaz  from  one  of  his  foes, 
and  left  him  to  reign  in  Jerusalem  as  his  son  and 
servant,  /.  e.,  his  humble  vassal,  Tiglath-Pileser  turned 
all  his  force  against  the  other  and  more  formidable 
one,  Rezin  of  Syria.  The  inscription  wherein  the 
siege  of  Damascus  (which  lasted  two  years)  and  the 
taking  of  it  are  described  is  unfortunately  so  fear- 
fully mutilated  that  very  few  whole  sentences  can 
be  made  out.  There  is  enough,  at  all  events,  to 
show  that  the  Syrian  army  was  completely  routed, 
chariots,  infantry,  cavalry  and  all;  that  Rezin,  "to 
save  his  life,  took  to  flight  all  alone,  and  entered  his 
capital  through  the  great  gate  ;  "  that  Tiglath-Pileser 
captured  some  of  his  captains  alive  and  had  them 
impaled,  then  "  shut  him  in  like  a  bird  in  a  cage," 
destroyed  the  magnificent  plantations  of  trees  '^  not 
to  be  numbered,"  which  surrounded  the  capital,  *'  not 
leaving  as  much  as  a  single  tree."  All  this  confirms 
and  completes  the  simple  statement  in  Second  Kings 
(xv.  9) :  ''  And-  the  king  of  Assyria  went  up  against 
Damascus  and  took  it,  and  carried  the  people  of  it 
captive  to    Kir   (not    identified)    and    slew    Rezin." 


twenty  years.  Now  it  has  been  seen  that  Menahem  was  still  reigning 
in  738,  and  Pekah  was  put  to  death,  and  succeeded  by  Hoshea  in  734. 
These  dates,  unequivocally  established  by  the  Canon  (see  Schrader's 
"  Die  Keilinschriften  und  das  Alte  Testament,"  1883,  pp.  251-258, 
and  page  475),  leave  no  room  for  dispute.  But  there  is  nothing  aston- 
ishing in  this,  since  the  parallel  dates  given  by  the  Bible  historians 
themselves  for  the  two  kingdoms  of  Judah  and  Israel  often  disagree. 
Besides,  as  monuments.  Canon,  and  Bible  history  entirely  agree  in  the 
date  of  a  most  important  event, — the  fall  of  Samaria,— we  have  hold 
of  a  principal  landmark,  and  the  mutual  confirmation  of  the  different 
sources  can  be  pronounced  amply  satisfactory  on  the  whole. 


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234 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


235 


"  And  King  Ahaz  went  to  Damascus  to  meet  Tiglath- 
Pileser,"  further  relates  the  Jewish  annahst.  Had 
we  a  completer  and  more  uninjured  set  of  this 
king's  inscriptions,  we  should  probably  find  that  the 
Jewish  monarch  came  not  alone  to  "meet"  face  to 
face  his  terrible  ally  and  master.  It  was  becoming 
an  accepted  custom  for  vassal  and  friendly  sover- 
eigns, not  only  to  send  their  tributes  and  gifts  to 
any  part  of  the  empire  where  the  king  might  be  at 
the  moment,  or  even  into  enemies'  countries,  but  to 
gather  at  some  important  point  where  he  might  be 
stopping  for  a  longer  time,  to  do  him  personal  hom- 
age. It  is  probable  that  such  gatherings  took  place 
by  royal  appointment  and  invitation,  not  to  say 
command,  and  that  non-attendance  would  have  been 
looked  upon  as  a  mortal  offence  and  breach  of  alle- 
giance and  punished  accordingly.  What  a  pity  we 
have  no  description  of  any  of  these  princely  convoca- 
tions !  They  must  have  been  festive  occasions,  cele- 
brated with  a  splendor  and  display  ot  which  we 
would  fain  evoke  a  vivid  picture  before  our  minds' 
eye,  and  we  may  fancy  that  the  grim  and  dreaded 
host  would,  if  only  out  of  vanity  and  policy,  unbend 
to  outward  graciousness  and  entertain  his  not  always 
willing  guests  right  royally,  even  while  making  them 
feel  the  rod  and  yoke.  That  the  guests,  on  their 
side,  would  not  be  behindhand  with  courtly  demon- 
strations and  dissembling  lip-homage  stands  to  rea- 
son, and  we  have  an  example  in  the  flattery  prac- 
tised by  King  Ahaz  of  Judah,  when  he  professed 
such  admiration  for  the  royal  portable  altar  at  which 
he  saw  Tiglath-Pilcser  sacrifice  at  Damascus,  that  h^ 


236 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


sent  to  the  high-priest  at  Jerusalem  *'  the  fashion  of 
the  altar  and  the  pattern  of  it,  according  to  all  the 
workmanship  thereof,"  desiring  him  to  order  an 
exact  copy  of  it  and  set  it  up  in  the  house  of  Yahveh 
against  his  return,  and  to  use  it  entirely,  instead  of 
the  old  brazen  altar  of  Solomon,  which  was  placed 
on  one  side  for  less  important  ministrations.  And 
when  he  returned  to  Jerusalem  and  saw  that  all  had 
been  done  according  to  his  orders,  he  carried  his  im- 
itation of  Assyrian  customs  so  far,  that  he  '*  drew 
near  unto  the  altar,  and  offered  thereon.  And  he 
burnt  his  burnt-offering  and  his  meal-offering,  and 
poured  his  drink-offering,  and  sprinkled  the  blood  of 
his  peace-offerings  upon  the  altar,"  although  it  was 
contrary  to  Jewish  custom  for  the  king  to  officiate 
himself.^ 

12.  The  contumacy  of  Tyre  was  neither  for- 
gotten nor  condoned  ;  but  the  king's  presence  was 
becoming  necessary  in  other  parts,  and  the  West 
was  in  no  condition  to  inspire  much  fear,  so  he  left 
his  Turtan  to  deal  with  the  merchant  city,  and 
inflict  on  her  an  enormous  fine,  while  he  himself 
turned  his  steps  once  more  to  the  South,  for  the 
Chaldean  princes  were  vigorously  pushing  their  ag- 
gressive policy  against  Babylonia,  where  they  were 
bent  on  establishing  a  Chaldean  monarchy ;  and  not 
unsuccessfully,    for    already    one    of    their    number, 

*  As  Max  Duncker  judiciously  remarks  :  "  No  one  can  seriously 
mean  to  assert  that  Ahaz  remodelled  his  own  national  worship  and 
changed  his  god's  altar  in  imitation  of  Rezin  the  arch  foe's  of 
both  Judah  and  Assyria,  who  had  but  just  been  overthrown." 
("  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,"  5th  edit.  vol.  ii.,  p.  31S,  note.) 


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THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


237 


Ukinzir,  (corrupted  by  the  Greeks  into  Chinziros), 
was  actually  king  of  Babylon.  It  appears,  therefore, 
that  Tiglath-Pileser  was  received  by  the  capital 
and  the  great  Babylonian  cities  like  a  deliverer;  his 
progress  through  the  country  was  triumphal,  and  at 
each  ancient  shrine  he  paid  the  customary  sacri- 
fices to  the  ancestral  gods.  His  expedition  against 
the  sea-side  princes  was,  on  the  whole,  successful. 
Energetic  it  certainly  was.  One  of  the  rebellious 
princes  was  impaled  before  the  gate  of  his  own 
city,  which  was  then  razed  to  the  ground.  Ukin- 
zir's  principality,  too,  was  laid  waste,  but  his  capital, 
Sapiya,  could  not  be  taken,  and  was  entered  at  last, 
not  by  force,  but  treaty,  while  Ukinzir  continued  to 
reign  at  Babylon,  jointly  with  Tiglath-Pileser  for  the 
last  four  years  of  the  latter's  reign, — at  least  nom- 
inally ;  in  reality  he  probably  was  his  obedient  vassal. 
At  Sapiya  the  Assyrian  held  one  of  those  royal 
levees  which  were  becoming  an  institution,  and  which 
enabled  the  kings  to  number  their  servants  and 
adherents,  and  test  their  loyalty  by  that  primitive 
and  fallacious  test — the  splendor  of  the  presents 
they  brought. 

13.  On  this  occasion  the  Assyrian  received  the  vol- 
untary submission  of  a  very  exalted  and  powerful 
personage,  Marduk-HABAL-IDDIN  (usually  called 
Merodach-Baladan,  as  his  name  is  rendered  in  the 
Bible),  the  ruler  of  BiT-Yakin,  the  largest  and 
wealthiest  of  the  Chaldean  principalities,  command- 
ing so  large  an  extent  of  coast  on  the  Gulf,  and 
thereby  affording  such  commercial  advantages  that 
the  sons  of  the  House  of  Yakin  went  by  the  flattering 


238 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


designation,  "  Kings  of  the  Sea,"  or  "  the  Sea-coast." 
How  important  the  Assyrian  conqueror  deemed 
this  particular  addition  to  the  number  of  his  vassals 
we  can  measure  by  the  complacency  and  stress  with 
which  he  records  the  occurrence.  *'  Marduk-habal- 
iddin,  son  of  Yakin,  king  of  the  sea-coast,  from  which 
to  the  kings,  my  fathers,  formerly  none  came  and 
kissed  their  feet, — terrible  fear  of  Asshur,  my  lord, 
overwhelmed  him  and  to  Sapiya  he  came  and  kissed 
my  feet ;  gold,  the  dust  of  his  country,  in  abun- 
dance, cups  of  gold,  instruments  of  gold,  the  prod- 
uct of  the  sea,  .  .  .  costly  garments,  gums,  oxen, 
and  sheep,  his  tribute,  I  received."  Tiglath-Pileser 
had,  indeed,  reason  to  exult,  judging  by  his  lights. 
But  to  us,  judging  by  the  light  of  subsequent 
events,  it  is  clear  that  the  ambitious,  crafty  schemer 
curbed  his  proud  neck  to  the  humiliating  act  of 
homage  only  to  gain  time  and  mature  his  far-reach- 
ing plans.  For  of  all  the  unfortunate  princes  who 
tendered  their  allegiance  from  helplessness  or  com- 
pulsion, surely  none  meant  less  to  keep  it ;  all  bitter 
foes  of  Assyria  as  they  were  at  heart,  he  was  the 
only  one  in  whom  was  danger,  and  the  arrogant 
conqueror,  whose  foot  perhaps  scarcely  refrained 
from  spurning  the  princely  form  that  prostrated 
itself  in  well-feigned  self-abasement,  might  have 
shuddered  in  his  seat  of  power  could  a  prophetic 
flash  have  revealed  to  him  that  he  had  before  him 
the  man  who,  for  fifty  years  to  come,  was  to  be  the 
evil  genius  of  Asshur,  nay,  one  of  the  indirect  causes 
of  Asshur's  fall,  since  he  was  to  loosen  and  set  in 
motion   some  of  the  stones  that  were  to  crush  the 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


239 


northern  kingdom's  too-uplifted  head.  But  it  is 
probable  that  no  foreboding  or  warning  could  at 
that  moment  have  shaken  "  the  stout  heart  of  the 
king  of  Asshur,"  or  dimmed  *'  the  glory  of  his  high 
looks.  For  he  hath  said :  By  the  strength  of  my 
hand  I  have  done  it,  and  by  my  wisdom  ;  for  I  am 
prudent :  and  I  have  removed  the  bounds  of  the 
peoples,  and  have  robbed  their  treasures,  and  I  have 
brought  down  as  a  valiant  man  them  that  sit  on 
thrones ;  and  my  hand  hath  found  as  a  nest  the 
riches  of  the  peoples  \  and  as  one  gathereth  eggs 
that  are  forsaken,  have  I  gathered  all  the  earth  : 
and  there  was  none  that  moved  the  wing,  or  that 
opened  the  mouth  or  chirped  "  (Isaiah,  x.  12-14). 

14.  Here  ends  the  political  and  military  career  of 
the  second  Tiglath-Pileser.  The  year  730  is  marked 
"  In  the  land,"  i.  e.,  the  king  remained  in  Assyria. 
The  two  following  years  he  seems  to  have  gone  again 
to  Babylon,  but  on  peaceful  and  even  religious 
errands.  The  annotated  Canon  has  this  rather 
obscure  note  for  both  those  years  :  "  The  king  takes 
the  hands  of  Bel."  It  is  supposed  to  allude  to  some 
peculiarly  solemn  and  festive  sacrifices  and  ceremo- 
nies, in  the  course  of  which  the  king  received  the 
highest   religious  consecration.     It   would    be  most 

\  interesting  to  find  out  the  exact  meaning  of  the 
phrase,  but  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  anything 
will  turn  up  to  enable  us  to  do  so.  In  727  Tiglath- 
Pileser  II.  died.  There  seems  to  have  been  peace 
during  the  last  three  years  of  his  reign,  but  a  revolt 
just  at  the  end. 

15.  He  was  succeeded  by  Shalmaneser  IV.     In 


^40 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


what  manner,  on  what  grounds,  by  what  claims  is  ut- 
terly unknown.  Whether  he  was  his  predecessor's 
son,  as  advanced  by  some  scholars,^  or  an  heir  by 
a  side  branch,  or  merely  an  usurper,  we  have  no 
means  whatever  of  ascertaining.  If  the  suggestion 
just  made  by  an  eminent  scholar, f  that  this  king 
and  one  who  stands  on  the  list  of  Babylon  under 
the  name  of  ILULAI  are  one  and  the  same,  just  as 
Tiglath-Pileser  and  Phul  are  one,  there  would  be 
great  probability  in  favor  of  the  first  of  these  con- 
jectures. Then  it  might  be  supposed  that  Phul 
had  a  son,  Ilulai,  who,  on  coming  to  the  throne, 
changed'  his  own  private  name  to  a  royal  one,  in  im- 
itation of  his  father.  But  these  are  as  yet  noth- 
ing but  conjectures.  Strangely  enough,  we  are  not 
much  better  informed  on  any  other  point  concern- 
ing this  king,  further  than  to  have  his  existence 
duly  attested  by  the  Eponym  Canon,  and  his  short 
reign — five  years — determined  by  the  same  document. 
He  has  left  no  monuments,  or,  more  probably,  none 
have  as  yet  been  found,  and  what  we  do  know  of 
his  deeds  we  learn  from  foreign  sources, — the  Bible 
and  a  late  Tyrian  historian.  For  so  much  seems 
sure,  that  he  occupied  himself  with  only  two  impor- 
tant wars,  one  against  Tyre  and  the  other  against 
Samaria. 

i6.  It  seems  very  startling  to  find  another  king 
engaged  in  conquering  those  same  countries  to 
which    a   warrior   of    Tiglath-Pileser's    stamp    had 


*  Ed.  Meyer,  C.  P.  Tiele,  Geo.  Rawlinson. 

t  C.  P.  Tiele,  "  Assyrisch  Babylonische  Geschichte." 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE. 


241 


dealt  so  many,  and,  it  would  seem,  finally  crushing 
blows.  But  the  fact  is,  their  resources  were  still 
great,  and  if  the  coalition  of  Ahab's  and  Shal- 
maneser  II. 's  time  could  have  been  enlarged  and 
maintained  they  might  have  stood  their  ground  to 
the  end.  But  the  hatred  and  jealousies  between 
them  were  too  inveterate  for  that,  and  the  tempta- 
tion to  use  the  conqueror's  might  to  compass  each 
other's  ruin  too  great  to  be  resisted  by  races  for 
whom  politics  were  a  question  of  purely  local  and 
selfish  interests,  with  a  short-sighted  range  nar- 
rowly limited  to  the  present,  and  to  whom  patri- 
otism was  an  unknown  quantity.  Still,  when  act- 
ually perishing,  partial  and  short-lived  alliances 
would  still  be  brought  about  between  the  implaca- 
ble rivals  and  foes.  But,  on  the  whole,  theirs  was 
the  case  of  the  bundle  of  sticks,  which,  being  untied, 
fall  apart  and  are  easily  broken  individually,  while 
the  whole  bundle  would  have  been  strong  enough 
to  withstand  any  effort.  At  this  moment,  however, 
a  new  actor  had  appeared  on  the  stage  and  brought 
a  revival  of  energy,  brief  and  deceptive,  it  is  true, 
but  sufficient  to  stave  off  the  final  catastrophe  yet  a 
little  while. 

17.  That  actor  was  Egypt,  so  long  inactive,  so 
long  out  of  sight ;  Egypt,  whose  long  race  was 
well-nigh  done,  whose  sands  were  running  very  low, 
and  who  was  never  more  to  stand  foremost  in  the 
place  of  honor  among  free  and  progressing  nations. 
The  long  course  of  conquests  in  Asia,  by  which  she 
avenged  the  thraldom  she  had  endured  under  the 
rule  of  Asiatic  invaders  (see  p.  26,  ff.),  had  been 
16 


242  ^-^-^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

stopped  by  dissensions  and  intestine  troubles  at 
home.  Originally  welded  together  out  of  many 
small  principalities,  the  monarchy  of  the  Nile  had 
gradually  dissolved  back  into  its  component  parts, 
and  become  divided  among  as  many  petty  rulers  as 
there  were  great  cities,  w^ith  their  temples,  colleges 
of  priests  and  surrounding  districts.  These  princes, 
more  often  than  not,  were  all  at  war  with  each 
other  and  therefore  exposed,  exactly  like  the  kings 
and  cities  of  Syria,  Palestine  and  Phoenicia,  and  for 
the  same  reasons,  to  the  attacks  of  any  neighbor 
or  invader.  But  the  danger  this  time  did  not  come 
from  Asia,  where  kings  and  peoples  had  enough  to 
engage  their  whole  powers  and  attention.  There 
was,  nearer  home,  a  country  and  race  which  had  to 
avenge  many  centuries  of  oppression  and  contempt. 
Ethiopia,  the  ''Vile  Kush"  of  the  inscriptions  in 
the  times  of  Egypt's  glory,  saw  her  opportunity 
and  took  it.  As  the  Alarodians  of  Urartu  and 
Nairi  had  borrowed  the  culture  of  their  most  invet- 
erate foes,  the  Assyrians,  so  the  Kushites  of  Ethi- 
opia had  assimilated  that  of  their  hated  masters  and 
had  become  a  match  for  them,  not  only  in  material 
strength,  but  also  in  intellectual  and  political  at- 
tainments. Under  able  and  ambitious  leaders  their 
progress  was  slow,  but  it  ended  in  the  subjugation 
of  all  the  Egyptian  principalities  until  the  Ethio- 
pian king,  Shabaka,  could  call  himself,  without 
boasting,  king  of  Egypt  also.  He  was  a  wise  and 
moderate  ruler,  and  governed  the  country  with  a 
strong  and  firm,  yet  also  a  mild  hand.  He  left 
most  of   the  petty  princes  in  their  places,  but  kept 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE.  243 

them  in  due  subjection,  and  Egypt  could  rejoice,  not 
only  in  a  new  era  of  material  prosperity,  but,  to  a 
certain  extent,  in  a  renewal  of  her  political  impor- 
tance. 

18.  This  king-  (the  So  or  SOH  of  the  Bible),  no 
sooner  had  established  himself  on  his  double  throne 
than  he  realized  the  impending  danger  threatened 
by  the  ever  approaching  Assyrian  thunder-cloud. 
When  all  the  intervening  nations  had  been  gathered, 
''  like  eggs  that  are  forsaken,"  it  was  not  likely  that 
so  rich  a  nest  as  Egypt  should  be  overlooked.  And 
now  that  even  the  Arabs,  that  movable  but  effec- 
tive bulwark,  had  been  subdued  the  intervening 
nations  were  few  indeed:  the  two  Hebrew  king-- 
doms  and  the  cities  of  the  sea-coast ;  and  those  few 
more  than  half  undone,  especially  Israel.  There- 
fore Shabaka  at  once  manifested  his  readiness  to 
support  such  of  the  still  surviving  states  as  had 
not  yet  lost  all  vital  energy  and  force  of  resistance. 
But  there  he  overrated  his  own  powers.  No  single 
adversary  could  be  a  match  for  Asshur  at  this  hey- 
day of  her  greatness,  and  the  time  had  not  yet  come 
when  the  iron-mailed  giant  with  the  feet  of  clay 
would  collapse  with  its  own  weight.  Naturally,  all 
that  still  hoped  against  hope  and  still  feebly  writhed 
in  the  lion's  paws  clutched  at  this  unexpected  and, 
as  they  fondly  fancied,  still  timely  aid  ;  but  it  proved 
to  them  a  delusion  and  a  snare,  and  the  more  clear- 
sighted among  statesmen  were  not  deceived.  ''  Woe 
to  them  that  go  down  to  Egypt  for  help,  and  stay 
on  horses,"  warns  Isaiah  the  prophet  and  prime 
minister  of  Judah  ;    '*  and  trust  in   chariots  because 


244 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


they  are  many,  and  in  horsemen  because  they  are 
very  strong.  .  .  .  Now  the  Egyptians  are  men,  and 
not  God  ;  and  their  horses  are  flesh,  and  not  spirit  " 
(xxxi.  1-3). 

19.  Thus  matters  stood  at  the  death  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser.  Shabaka  had  seated  himself  in  the  throne 
of  Egypt  the  year  before.  This  coincidence  fa- 
vored, indeed  suggested  revolt.     On  which  side  the 


^)|-i!i:.^;'.-'ini>j;ii^:--fr,:,':^:,.^!i 


43. — CITY   AND    PALACES.      (SOLDIERS   WITH    BOOTY.) 

overtures  were  made,  we  do  not  know.  But  very 
soon  we  find  Tyre  refusing  tribute  and  preparing 
for  the  consequences.  But  what  the  proud  queen 
of  the  seas  was  perhaps  7iot  prepared  for,  was  to 
see  her  own  sister-cities  all  along  the  coast  join  not 
in  her  support,  but  for  her  destruction.  Whether 
from  abject  fear  for  themselves,  or  from  a  low  and 
spiteful  jealousy,  they  all  arrayed  themselves  under 
Assyrian    command   and  went  to  sea  against  Tyre 


THE  SECOND  EMPIRE.  245 

with  60  ships  and  8000  oarsmen.  Tyre  at  that 
moment  had  only  12  ships  to  dispose  of,  and  with 
this  insufficient  force  held  out  for  five  years  on  her 
rocky  islets,  vigorously  blockaded  by  sea  by  her  own 
country-people,  while  the  Assyrians  placed  military 
out-posts  on  the  coast  at  the  mouth  of  the  river 
and  at  all  the  waterworks,  to  prevent  any  desperate 
sally  for  water.  Fortunately,  the  besieged  were  able 
to  procure  water  on  the  islands  by  digging  cisterns 
and  boring  wells. 

20.  How  great  and  general  were  the  hopes  raised 
by  the  death  of  Tiglath-Pileser  we  see  from  the 
warnings  addressed  by  Isaiah  to  all  the  nations  of 
Syria  in  turn.  To  Philistia  he  says:  ^'  Rejoice  not, 
O  Philistia,  all  of  thee,  because  the  rod  that  smote 
thee  is  broken  ;  for  out  of  the  serpent's  root  shall 
come  forth  a  basilisk  and  his  fruit  shall  be  a  fiery 
flying  serpent.  .  .  .  Howl,  O  gate !  Cry,  O  city ! 
Thou  art  melted  away,  O  Philistia,  all  of  thee  I  for 
there  cometh  a  smoke  out  of  the  North.  .  .  ."  (xiv. 
29-31).  Israel  also  foolishly  rejoiced,  and  fell  to 
conspiring.  When  Shalmaneser,  the  Book  of  Kings 
tells  us,  first  "  came  up  "  against  Hoshea,  the  latter 
*'  became  his  servant  and  brought  him  presents." 
But  soon  after,  the  king  of  Assyria  ''  found  conspir- 
acy in  Hoshea  ;  for  he  had  sent  messengers  to  So, 
king  of  Egypt,  and  offered  no  present  to  the  king 
of  Assyria,  as  he  had  done  year  by  year;  therefore 
the  king  of  Assyria  shut  him  up  and  bound  him  up 
in  prison."  This  is  the  last  we  hear  of  the  last 
independent  king  of  Israel  ;  whether  he  died  in 
prison,  or  was  slain,  or  lived  in  bondage,  we  do  not 


246 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


know.  ''  Then  the  king  of  Assyria  came  up  through- 
out the  land,  and  went  up  to  Samaria,  and  besieged 
it  three  years.  .   .   ."  (Second  Kings,  xvii.  4-5). 


^^ 


m 


VIII. 

THE   PRIDE   OF  ASSHUR.— SARGON. 

I.  ''In  the  ninth  year  of  Hoshea  the  king  of  As- 
syria took  Samaria."  These  words  immediately 
follow  those  with  which  the  preceding  Fail  of  Sa- 
chapter   closes.     Yet  they  had   to  be  re-      Accession 

1   f       ^1       1         •        •  r  1         i.  ofSargon, 

served  for  the  begmning  oi  a  new  chapter,  722  B.C. 
for  between  the  two  lay — the  beginning  of  a  new 
reign,  as  the  king  of  Assyria  who  '*  went  up  against 
Samaria"  was  not  the  same  who  took  it.  It  was 
Shalmaneser  IV.  who  began  the  siege  and  carried  it 
on  for  three  years, — whether  personally  or  through 
his  generals,  we  are  nowhere  told, — but  it  was  Sar- 
gon  who  completed  it.  One  of  the  first  entries  in 
Sargon's  annals  is  this :  '*  In  the  beginning,  of  my 
reign  I  besieged,  I  took  by  the  help  of  the  god  Sha- 
mash,  who  gives  me  victory  over  my  enemies,  the 
city  of  Samaria  {ir-Samirina).  27,280  of  its  inhab- 
itants I  carried  away.  I  took  fifty  chariots  for  my 
own  royal  share.  I  took  them  (the  captives)  to  As- 
syria and  put  into  their  places  people  whom  my 
hand  had  conquered.  I  set  my  officers  and  govern- 
ors over  them,  and  laid  on  them  a  tribute  as  on  the 
Assyrians."^"     To   what   portions   of   the   Assyrian 

*  Another  inscription  says,  "As  the  former  king." 

247 


44. — PORTRAIT   OF    SARGON.      (kHORSABAD.) 
(For  axiother  portrait  of  Sargon  see  ''  Story  of  Chaldea,"  ill.  No.  64.) 


248 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  240 

empire  the  captives  were  transferred  we  are  not  in- 
formed, but  the  Book  of  Kings  specifies  some  of 
them.  There  we  find  that  the  conqueror  "  carried 
Israel  away  into  Assyria,  and  placed  them  in  Halah, 
and  in  Habor  the  river  of  Gozan,  and  in  the  cities 
of  the  Medes."  Habor  is  the  river  Khabour,  and 
Gozan  the  portion  of  Mesopotamia  watered  by  it. 
Halah  is  thought  by  some  to  stand  for  the  city 
Kalah,  and  by  others  for  an  Eastern  province  not 
very  clearly  identified,  while  the  general  location  of 
the  ''cities  of  the  Medes"  cannot  be  mistaken. 
What  people  were  brought  to  Samaria  the  same 
book  tells  us,  at  least  in  part.  They  were,  in  the 
first  place,  people  from  Babel,  Kutha,  Sippar,  then 
from  Hamath,  and  from  Avva  (unidentified).  The 
same  passage  (xvii.  24-33)  further  informs  us  that 
the  newcomers  were  frightened  at  the  lions  which, 
it  appears,  abounded  in  their  new  quarters,  having 
probably  multiplied,  unchecked,  during  the  late  dis- 
astrous times,  and  that,  some  of  their  own  number 
having  been  devoured,  they  attributed  the  visitation 
to  the  anger  of  the  god  of  the  country,  whom  they 
therefore  determined  to  serve  along  with  their  own 
gods,  to  pacify  him,  and  they  sent  a  message  of 
that  purport  to  the  king.  "  Then  the  king  of  As- 
syria commanded,  saying,  '  Carry  thither  one  of  the 
priests  whom  ye  brought  from  thence,  and  let  him 
go  and  dwell  there,  and  let  him  teach  them  the 
manner  of  the  god  of  the  land.'  "  This  was  done, 
and  the  result  was  a  very  mixed  religion,  judging 
from  the  simple  statement:  "They feared  Yahveh, 
and  served  their  own  gods,  after  the  manner  of  the 


250 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


nations  from  among  whom  they  had  been  carried 
away  .  .  .  their  children  Hkewise,  and  their  chil- 
dren's children,  as  did  their  fathers,  so  do  they  unto 
this  day."  The  foreign  nations  represented  in  this 
manner  in  the  land  of  Israel  were  many  more  than 
the  Bible  history  mentions  by  name,  and  we  are 
enabled  to  complete  the  list  from  the  Assyrian 
monuments  of  the  time.  Sargon  in  his  annals  in- 
forms us  that,  in  the  seventh  year  of  his  reign  he 
''  made  subject  several  remote  Arabian  tribes  that 
dwelt  in  a  land  which  no  wise  men  and  no  sender  of 
messengers  knew,  a  land  which  had  never  paid  trib- 
ute to  the  kings  his  fathers,  and  the  reinnajit  of  them 
he  transported  and  settled  in  the  city  of  Samaria ^ 
No  wonder,  then,  that  the  later  Jews  of  Jerusalem, 
who  prided  themselves  on  the  purity  of  their  race 
and  worship,  should  have  looked  down  on  this 
strange  medley  of  nations  and  gods,  the  ''  Samar- 
itans," with  the  utter  contempt  and  disgust  which 
we  repeatedly  find  reproved  by  Jesus  in  word  and 
deed  in' the  name  of  humanity  and  charity. 

2.  Who  and  what  was  Sargon  ?  It  is  not  improb- 
able that  he  was  the  general  who  conducted  the 
siege  of  Samaria,  either  under  Shalmaneser  IV.  or 
in  his  absence,  and  that  he  had  won  th"e  army's 
regard  to  an  extent  that  enabled  him  to  proclaim 
himself  king  on  that  monarch's  death,  in  firm  reli- 
ance on  their  countenance  and  support.  There  is 
nothing  to  prove  that  such  was  not  the  case.  As 
to  his  rank  and  birth,  he  speaks  of  "  the  kings  his 
fathers."  But  so  did  Tiglath-Pileser  II.,  and  the 
evidence   is   not   considered   conclusive  in  his   case^ 


THE  PRIDE  OE  ASSHUR. 


251 


because  he  does  not  mention  either  his  father  or 
erandfather,  as  is  the  invariable  custom  of  other 
kings.  We  notice  the  same  omission  in  Sargon's 
documents.  His  name  yields  no  indication  oneway 
or  the  other.  It  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  ancient 
Sargon  of  Agade,  and  he  may  have  assumed  it 
with  the  royal  power.  This  name,  in  its  original 
Semitic  form,  SharrU-KENU,  is  translated  "the  es- 
tablished "  king,  or  "  the  true,  faithful  "  king.  It  is 
probable  that  he  himself  attached  a  moral  signifi- 
cance to  the  name,  besides  the  prestige  of  a  glorious 
memory,  for  he  repeatedly  plays  on  the  word  kenu 
in  his  inscriptions,  calling  himself  "the  true,"  or 
"  faithful  {kenu)  shepherd,"  and  generally  showing 
more  sense  of  moral  obligation  towards  his  people 
than  any  of  his  predecessors. 

3.  Under  the  reign  of  this  king  Assyria  maintains 
herself,  outwardly,  on  the  pinnacle  to  which  the  last 
two  monarchs  had  raised  her,  and  still  further  ex- 
tends her  dominion.  We  note  this  difference,  how- 
ever, that  the  wars  are  more  than  ever  conducted  on 
all  the  boundaries  at  once,  and,  except  in  the  East, 
where  the  Assyrian  arms  are  pushed  far  beyond  the 
Zagros,  they  are  not  wars  of  conquest,  but  of  de- 
fence and  of  repression.  The  Assyrian  policy  is 
that  vigorously  centralized  despotism  so  character- 
istic of  the  Second  Empire :  rebellious  cities  and 
provinces,  when  conquered,  are  no  longer  left  to 
native  princes  under  the  mere  obligation  of  paying 
tribute,  but  placed  under  Assyrian  governors,  who 
are  strictly  controlled  and  directed  from  home,  and 
only  the  remoter  principalities  are  suffered  to  retain 


45-— SAEGON'S  STANDARD    (WITH  FIGURE  OF  ASSHUR). 


THE  PKIDE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


253 


some  show  of  independence,  under  vassal  rulers, 
either  confirmed  or  imposed  by  the  distant,  yet  ever 
present  and  watchful  "  Great  King,"  '*  king  of  na- 
tions." The  correspondence  between  the  governors 
and  the  central  power  is  brisk  and  minute  in  detail, 
as  we  see  from  numerous  reports  and  despatches 
which  have  been  found  in  the  royal  archives  of 
Nineveh,  all  addressed  directly  to  *'my  lord,  the 
king."  But  not  the  completeness  of  this  grinding 
machinery,  not  the  fear  of  inevitable  and  ruthless 
slaughter,  torture  and  captivity,  nor  the  wholesale 
deportations  which  continued  on  an  increasing  scale, 
could  keep  the  subject  provinces  quiet.  Coalitions 
were  constantly  forming,  more  and  more  extensive, 
more  and  more  desperately  bent  on  breaking  the 
yoke,  and  there  must  have  been  a  Ijvely  undercurrent 
of  adventure,  of  danger,  of  narrow  escapes  and  mor- 
tal failures,  consequent  on  the  conspiring,  exchang- 
ing of  secret  messages,  sending  of  open  embassies 
under  plausible  pretences,  which  were  going  on 
throughout  the  lands  that  ostensibly  owned  the  As- 
syrian dominion,  only  biding  their  time  to  throw  it 
off.  That  time  had  not  come  yet,  not  by  a  hundred 
years,  and  the  issue  of  all  these  attempts  was  mostly 
calamitous,  but  their  persistence  under  such  dis- 
couragement and  against  such  fearful  odds  was  a 
sign  of  the  times,— especially  the  fact  that  many  of 
them  took  the  hitherto  unknown  form  of  popular 
risings  ;  the  inscriptions  of  this  reign  repeatedly 
mention  that  t\\Q  people  of  this  or  that  city  dethroned 
and  slew — or  ''  bound  " — the  tyrant  "  placed  over  " 
them  by  the  Assyrian  king,  and  set   up  a  prince  of 


254 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


their  own  choice  who  refused  tribute  and  straig-ht- 
way  prepared  for  war.  To  be  sure,  these  upstart 
princes  generally  met  a  quick  and  deplorable  end, 
and  the  rising  was  quelled  in  fire  and  blood  ;  but  to 
little  ultimate  purpose,  for  the  nations  had  grown 
reckless  with  suffering,  and,  from  standing  sullenly 
at  bay,  were  passing  into  that  desperately  aggressive 
stage  in  which  neither  worldly  wisdom  nor  statesman- 
ship find  a  hearing,  and  which  ends  either  in  total 
annihilation,  or  vengeance,  full  and  triumphant — 
more  often  the  latter. 

4.  Nowhere  was  the  movement  more  general, 
hope  more  indestructible,  than  in  the  West. 
Egypt  was  the  soul  and  secret  mainspring  of  the 
resistance  which  no  amount  of  punishment  could 
crush,  of  the  outbreaks  which  no  common-sense 
dictates  could  stay.  Shabaka,  remarks  orie  histo- 
rian, was  to  the  nations  of  Syria  a  messiah,  always 
promising,  always  expected,  never  coming,  because 
his  strength  was  not  equal  to  his  will.  Hezekiah, 
king  of  Judah,  was  the  only  monarch  who  abstained 
from  conspiring  and  joining  coalitions  against  the 
Assyrians,  preserving  a  strictly  neutral  attitude, 
and  most  probably  keeping  him  in  good  humor  by 
presents,  if  not  by  actual  tribute,  in  obedience  to 
the  urgent  remonstrances  of  his  spiritual  and  politi- 
cal adviser,  the  prophet  Isaiah,  who  never  ceased 
to  inveigh  against  the  powerlessness  of  Egypt  and 
the  foolishness  of  putting  any  reliance  in  her  assist- 
ance. The  prophet's  views,  thus  far,  accord  per- 
fectly with  those  of  the  Assyrian  monarch  himself, 
who  speaks  with  a  certain  compassionate  contempt 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR. 


255 


of  the  "  embassies,"  which  the  princes  of  Syria  were 
forever  sending  to  the  king  of  Egypt  and  Ethiopia, 
*' a  ruler  wdio  could  not  save  them."  It  should  be 
noted  that,  in  the  language  of  the  monuments  for 
these  and  the  follow^ing  troubled  times,  ''sending 
embassies  "  is  another  word  for  "  conspiring." 

5.  Under  the  influence  of  these  deceptive  hopes, 
Syria  rose  up  in  arms  the  very  next  year  after  Sar- 
gon's   accession.      All  the  old  ground    had    to  be 
gone  over,  all  the   old   battles  to    be    fought    over 
again,  and   all  the   old  familiar  names  confront  us 
once  more  :    Damascus,   and  Arpad,  and    Hamath, 
and  even  Samaria.     For  the  people  of  Israel  had 
not  all  been   slain   or  transferred   to  distant  lands  ; 
there  was  a  remnant  left,   sufficient  to   keep  up  a 
strong  leaven  of  national  spirit.     In  the  picturesque 
and  bitter  language   of  a  prophet   (Amos,   iii.   12), 
*'  As  the  shepherd  rescueth  out    of   the   mouth  of 
the  lion  two  legs  or  a  piece  of  an  ear,  so  shall   the 
children  of  Israel  be  rescued  that  sit  in  Samaria;  " 
and    further  (v.  3) :     *'  The  city  that  went  forth  a 
thousand    shall    have    an    hundred    left,   and    that 
which  went  forth  an  hundred  shall  have  ten  left ;  " 
or,  according  to  Isaiah,  the  most  poetic   of  proph- 
ets :  "  The  remnant  of  the  trees  of  his  forest  shall  be 
few,  that  a  child   may  write  them.  .  .  .  Yet  there 
shall  be   gleanings  left  therein   as    the  shaking  of 
an  olive-tree,  two  or  three  berries  in  the  top  of  the 
uppermost    bough,    four   or   five    in     the     outmost 
branches  of   a    fruitful    tree."      Hamath    seems    to 
have  been  the  headquarters  this  time.     Iaubid  (or 
Ilubid),   apparently  an   upstart  usurper,   had   pos- 


256 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


sessed  himself  of  the  crown,  we  are  told,  and  incited 
the  others,  having  occupied  the  strong  city  of 
Karkar.  In  that  city,  —  the  same  before  which  was 
fought  the  great  battle  of  the  first  Syrian  league 
against  Shalmaneser  II,  (see  p.  181), — laubid  was 
besieged,  taken  prisoner,  and  flayed  alive  by  order 
of  Sargon,  who  had  the  execution  represented  in 
full  on  one  of  the  sculptures  in  his  own  palace. 
To  keep  so  irrepressible  a  province  under  better 
control,  63,000  Assyrians  were  brought  over  to  dwell 
in  it,  probably  in  the  place  of  the  slain  and  the 
prisoners  carried  into  captivity.  After  that,  short 
work  was  made  of  the  rebellion,  and  the  condition 
in  which  the  country  was  left  by  the  Assyrian  army 
as  it  marched  down  to  the  frontier  of  Egypt,  to 
meet  Shabaka,  the  "  sultan  of  Egypt  "  ^  [Siltannu 
Muzri)y  on  his  own  ground,  before  he  could  come 
up  to  the  rescue  of  his  unfortunate  clients  and 
allies,  could  not  be  more  aptly  and  vividly  de- 
scribed than  in  the  words  of  a  Hebrew  prophet : 
**  That  which  the  palmer-worm  hath  left  hath  the 
locust  eaten  ;  and  that  which  the  locust  hath  left 
hath  the  canker-worm  eaten  ;  and  that  which  the 
canker-worm  left  hath  the  caterpillar  eaten.  .  .  . 
For  a  nation  is  come  up  upon  my  land,  strong  and 
without  number ;  his  teeth  are  the  teeth  of  a  lion, 
he  hath  the  jaw  teeth  of  a  great  lion.  .  .  .  The 
land  is  as  the  garden  of  Eden  before  them  and  be- 
hind them  a  desolate  wilderness.  .  .  ."  (Joel,  i.  4- 
6  ;   ii.  3). 

*  Probably  the  earliest  known  use  of  the  title. 
17 


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257 


258 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


6.  The  two  greatest  powers  of  the  ancient  world 
stood  face  to  face  for  the  first  time  in  720  B.C., 
before  the  city  of  Raphia,  situated  on  the  sea- 
coast,  south  of  Gaza,  the  king  of  which  had  joined 
Shabaka.  The  occasion  was  a  memorable  one  and 
full  of  significance,  but  not  auspicious  for  the  older 
power,  which  had  long  been  on  the  wane,  while 
her  younger  antagonist  was  still  in  the  prime  of 
her  might,  and  the  flaws  which  were  already  at 
work  preparing  her  rapid  ruin,  though  plainly  visible 
from  our  remote  and  elevated  point  of  view,  had 
not  begun  to  impair  her  vigor  perceptibly  to  con- 
temporaries or  to  herself.  So  the  struggle  was  an 
unequal  one,  and  quickly  ended  in  the  complete 
defeat  of  Egypt,  and  the  undignified  flight  of 
Shabaka,  who  left  the  field  accompanied  by  one  of 
his  shepherds.  Sargon  did  not,  however,  follow  up 
his  victory  by  an  invasion,  as  Isaiah  had  expected, 
having  too  much  on  his  hands  at  the  time,  and  only 
partially  fulfilled  the  prediction  of  the  Hebrew  seer 
and  statesman,  whose  foresight  was  not  to  be  fully 
justified  till  many  years  later. 

7.  It  must  have  been  about  the  same  time  that 
the  long  siege  of  Tyre,  begun  with  that  of  Samaria, 
came  to  an  end.  The  city  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  actually  taken  ;  it  is  only  said  to  have  been 
"  pacified,"  and  it  is  very  probable  that  the  be- 
siegers, having  grown  as  weary  of  the  protracted 
and  unexciting  operation  as  the  besieged,  besides 
being  needed  elsewhere,  offered  terms, — heavy,  no 
doubt,  but  preferable  to  utter  destruction, — and 
that  Tyre  took  the  alternative  and  paid  the  ran- 
dom, buying  what,  after  all,  proved  only  a  respite. 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  2^0 

8.    The  next   ten  years  were   laborious    ones   for 
Sargon.     A  vast  and  powerfully  organized  conspir- 
acy which  embraced  the  entire  North    and    North- 
west— all  the  Nairi-lands,  with  several  neighboring 
countries, — and  of  which  Urza,  king  of  Urartu,  was 
the  soul,  broke  out  with  the  suddenness  and  violence 
of  a  long-latent  conflagration,  and  kept  the  king  and 
his   generals   so    continually    on   the  alert    that    he 
found    no    time  for  an   expedition  which  he  must 
have  had  much  at  heart,  that  against  the  Chaldean, 
Merodach-Baladan,   of  Bit-Yakin.      This   ambitious 
and  crafty  politician,  after  blinding  Tiglath-Pileser's 
eyes  by  his  voluntary  homage  at  Sapiya  (see  p.  238), 
and    thus   securing    a    long   interval    of    peace    and 
safety,    made  good   use  of  the   ten   years  that  fol- 
lowed.    How  he  paved  the  way  for  his  far-reaching 
designs  we  have  no  means  of  finding  out  ;  but  we 
may  be  sure   that   he   spared   neither   promises  nor 
intrigues,  neither  gifts  nor  diplomatic  efforts,  for  in 
the  very  year  of  Sargon's  accession  he  obtained  his 
heart's  desire,  the  crown  of  Babylon,  and  could  rely 
on  the  support  of,  at  least,  one  powerful  ally,  Khum- 
BANIGASH,  the  king  of  Elam.     It  would  seem,  from 
the  sequel    of   events,    that    he    was    not    accepted 
enthusiastically,   certainly  not  unanimously,  by  the 
Babylonians.      Sargon  calls    him   ''  Merodach-Bala- 
dan, the  foe,  the  perverse,  who,  contrary  to  the  will 
of  the  great    gods,   exercised    sovereign    power   at 
Babylon,"    and    it  is    easy  to    imagine    the    ancient 
capital  and  the   other  great   cities   divided  into  two 
parties,   the  Assyrian    and    the   Chaldean.       In    his 
very  first  year,  Sargon  had  managed  to  make  a  rapid 


26o  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

descent  on  the  frontier  of  Elam  and  inflict  a  smart 
blow  on  the  usurper's  ally  ;  but  he  was  so  pressed 
for  time,  his  presence  was  so  imperatively  demanded 
in  the  West,  to  stop  the  progress  of  Shaba  ka  by 
marching  down  on  him,  that  he  was  not  able  to  fol- 
low up  this  first  advantage,  and  the  chance  he  lost 
then  he  could  not  retrieve  till  fully  eleven  years  later, 
Merodach-Baladan  peacefully  reigning  at  Babylon 
during  that  time,  unchallenged  and  unopposed. 

9.  It  was  immediately  after  the  battle  of  Raphia 
that  the  outbreak  in  the  North  took  place.  No 
ordinary  local  revolt,  aiming  merely  at  deliverance 
from  the  Assyrian  supremacy  and  from  tribute,  but 
a  mighty  coalition,  which  several  princes,  hitherto 
friendly,  were  forced  to  join  out  of  fear, — one  of  them 
having  been  massacred  by  his  own  subjects, — and 
which  would  most  certainly  have  ended  in  a  collec- 
tive descent  into  Assyria,  had  not  Sargon  been  so 
promptly  on  the  scene  himself,  repressing,  punishing 
and  negotiating.  Yet,  though  he  was  as  usual  victo- 
rious at  the  moment,  filled  the  highlands  with  terror, 
and  weeded  them  of  a  great  number  of  their  inhab- 
itants, whom  he  sent  to  dwell  in  Hamath  and  other 
Syrian  lands,  his  success  was  so  far  from  complete 
that  the  conspiracy  continued  to  spread,  and  the 
coalition  to  strengthen  itself  as  soon  as  he  was 
called  away.  Indeed,  so  many  were  the  threads  and 
so  skilfully  woven,  that  for  several  years  he  never 
could  do  his  work  of  repression  thoroughly,  or  ad- 
vance very  far  into  the  Armenian  mountains,  be- 
cause some  distant  member  of  the  coalition  would 
be  sure  to  begin  a  stir  at   the  critical  moment   and 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  26 1 

Operate  a  diversion,  by  drawing  him  away  from  the 
headquarters  of  the  conspiracy — the  kingdom  of 
Urartu  and  its  immediate  neighbors.  One  year 
it  is  the  kinir  of  Karkhemish  who  rebels — an  unex- 
pected  occurrence,  for  he  was  an  old  man,  and  for 
thirty  years  at  least  had  managed  to  keep  on  good 
terms  with  his  terrible  neighbor,  and  his  name,  all 
through  the  reigns  of  Tiglath-Pileser  and  Shalma- 
neser,  continually  stands  conspicuous  on  the  lists  of 
princes  who  do  homage  and  bring  presents.  It  by 
no  means  follows,  of  course,  that  he  could  not,  at  the 
same  time,  have  been  secretly  concerned  in  the  un- 
derhand intrigues  that  were  going  on  at  all  the  Syrian 
courts,  and,  like  so  many  others,  biding  his  time. 
If  so,  he  did  not  choose  it  well  after  all,  for  the  angry 
lion  made,  so  to  speak,  just  a  mouthful  of  him  ;  he 
was  dragged  into  captivity,  with  the  greatest  part 
of  the  people  of  his  capital,  while  his  palace  and 
the  city,  that  centre  of  traffic,  that  mart  of  the 
world's  trade  and  emporium  of  wealth,  yielded  to 
the  royal  treasury  of  Nineveh  an  amount  of  booty 
fabulous  even  for  those  times  of  wholesale  plunder, 
Assyrian  colonists  were  then  settled  in  Karkhemish, 
and  an  Assyrian  governor  sent  to  rule  it.  This  was 
the  final  blow  dealt  to  the  Hittite  nationality,  which, 
after  the  fall  of  Damascus,  had  still  thr  bbcd  in  ihe 
city  that  held  the  great  national  sanctuary  and  the 
last  national  kings,  as  the  blood  retreats  to  the  heart 
and  courses  through  that  stronghold  to  the  very  last. 
10.  Another  year,  the  Median  districts  in  the 
Zagros  and  on  the  eastern  slope  of  that  mountain 
range,  never  quite  daunted  or  submissive,  notwith- 


2^2  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

standing  the  Assyrian  forts  that  had  been  con- 
structed at  different  times  on  commanding  points 
and  strongly  garrisoned,  revolted  with  an  unanimity 
which  could  come  only  from  previous  agreement, 
and  which  made  an  expedition  imperatively  urgent. 
The  measures  which  Sargon  took,  though  marked 
with  the  usual  ferocity,  were  certainly  wise,  and  cal- 
culated to  produce  a  lasting  effect.  The  cities  which 
he  destroyed  and  from  which  the  native  population 
had  been  transferred  to  Ass}Tia,  he  re-built,  settling 
Assyrians  in  them,  and  for  their  protection  he  pro- 
vided them  with  forts,  thus  creating  a  complete  chain 
of  Assyrian  outposts,  with  characteristic  Assyrian 
names,  such  as  Kar-Sharrukin,  Kar-Nineb,  etc. 
{Kar,  "  fortress.")  Some  of  the  rebel  princes  he  had 
executed  after  the  usual  cruel  manner  (flaying  alive 
was  the  fashion  then,  rather  than  impaling),  others 
he  pardoned  and  reinstated,  even  adding  to  their 
territory  towns  that  had  voluntarily  submitted.  Of 
such  submissions  there  were  many.  On  one  oc- 
casion he  mentions  that  of  twenty-two  *'  chiefs  of 
towns,"  on  another  of  twenty-eight,  then  of  thirty- 
four.  That  these  revolts  stood  in  direct  connection 
with  the  great  conspiracy  of  which  Urza  held  the 
threads  was  amply  proved  ;  and  Sargon,  in  his  deal- 
ings with  the  rebel  princes,  naturally  proportioned 
his  severity  or  mercifulness  to  the  degree  in  which 
he  found  them  implicated  or  stubborn. 

II.  It  was  not  until  the  fifth  year  since  the  first 
outbreak  in  Nairi,  and  after  several  hurried  and 
therefore  only  partially  successful  expeditions  into 
the  mountains  of  the  North,  that   Sargon   felt  him- 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


263 


self  sufficiently  strengthened  and  secure  in  the  rear 
to  plan  a  great  and  decisive  invasion,  not  only  of 
the  already  familiar  highlands  of  Nairi,  but  the  re- 
mote and  far  more  inaccessible  fastnesses  of  Urartu 
itself.  By  this  time  Urza  found  himself  well-nigh 
alone,  his  allies  having  been  successively  detached 
or  cut  off,  like  the  limbs  of  a  tree  that  is  to  be 
felled.  One  of  these,  however,  was  still  left  him,  a 
friend,  staunch  to  share  an  inevitable  fate.  This 
was  his  nearest  neighbor,  Urzana,  king  of  MUZAZIR, 
a  country  which  has  not  yet  been  fully  identified, 
and  is  therefore  not  to  be  found  on  maps,  but  is 
thought  to  have  been  the  next  to  Urartu  in  a  west- 
erly direction,  and  to  the  north  of  Lake  Van. 
Muzazir  seems  to  have  been,  as  much  as  Urartu  it- 
self, the  centre  and  core  of  the  Alarodian  national- 
ity ;  perhaps  more,  since  it  was  the  capital  of 
Muzazir,  which  held  the  chief  national  sanctuary, 
that  of  Haldi,  the  Alarodians'  "  great  god,"  the 
father  and  chief  of  the  numerous  lesser  deities,  who, 
like  those  of  their  kindred  Hittite  and  Canaanitic 
races,  were  probably  nothing  more  than  local 
names  and  forms  of  the  one  deity,  as  worshipped  in 
the  different  districts  and  cities  of  the  race.  (See 
p.  107.)  Even  after  Sargon  had  '' killed  quanti- 
ties without  number,  people  of  Urza,  and  250  per- 
sons of  his  royal  race,"  and  captured  all  his  cav- 
alry,— after  Urza  himself  had  fled  into  the  moun- 
tains, trusting  to  the  fleetness  of  his  mare  to  save 
his  life,  Urzana  still  *'  refused  the  protection  of 
Asshur."  Perhaps  he  counted  on  the  ruggedness 
of   his    country    as    a    last    and    efficient    safeguard 


264 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


against  an  enemy  already  tired  and  partly  satiated 
with  slaughter  and  plunder.  Sargon  himself  calls 
the  country  a  land  of  *'  inaccessible  mountains  im- 
passable for  the  horses,"  and  mentions  that  he 
"recommended  himself  to  the  gods,  his  helpers," 
as  he  started  on  the  venture  with  a  picked  corps. 
When  Urzana  found  that  Sargon  was  actually  upon 
him,  he  suddenly  lost  heart,  ''  escaped  like  a  bird  and 
went  to  the  high  mountains,"  i.  e.,  into  the  passes 
and  caves  where  no  pursuit  could  follow,  where  no 
track  or  path  could  betray  his  hiding-places.  Sar- 
gon now,  probably  unresisted,  "  took  the  town  of 
Muzazir,"  seized  on  all  that  belonged  to  Urzana — 
his  wives,  his  sons,  his  servants,  cattle  and  treasure 
of  all  kinds,  and  at  last  "  took  with  him  the  god 
Haldi  "  and  other  divinities,  ''  and  their  holy  vessels 
in  great  numbers."  Urza  had  "  for  five  months  wan- 
dered about  alone  in  the  mountains,"  going  from 
heights  to  valleys,  waiting  and  watching  for  news, 
of  a  certainty,  more  hungrily  than  even  for  food. 
And  when  the  news  came  they  broke  his  heart. 
The  situation  is  so  highly  tragical  that  even  the 
dry  statement  in  the  Assyrian  ofificial  annals  invests 
it  with  a  great  dignity  and  pathos.  "  Urza  heard 
the  fall  of  Muzazir,  the  capture  of  his  god,  Haldi. 
He  despaired  on  account  of  the  victories  of  Asshur, 
and  with  his  own  hand  cut  off  his  life.  .  .  ."  It 
would  seem  that  here  was  an  end  of  Urartu  and 
Nairi.  But  nothing  can  equal  the  power  of  re- 
bound which  all  those  old  nations  seem  to  have 
possessed.  A  very  few  years  later  we  already  find 
a  new  king  of  Urartu   brewing  mischief  in  the  old 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  265 

way,  among  his  neighbors,  and  when  Sargon's 
successor  dies,  assassinated  by  two  of  his  own  sons, 
it  is  to  Urartu  the  murderers  fly,  certain  to  find 
there  shelter  and  a  friendly  reception. 

12.  The  next  three  years  passed  in  petty  warfare, 
with  the  object  now  of  punishing  several  old  allies 
of  Urza,  some  of  them  on  very  remote  boundaries, 
as  far  as  Cilicia,  now  of  settling  a  family  quarrel  in 
some  loyal  vassal  country,  where  two  claimants  for 
the  throne  would  appeal  to  the  arbitration  of  the 
great  king,  or  one  would  apply  to  him  for  armed  as- 
sistance,— an  occurrence  which  became  quite  frequent 
in  this  and  the  following  reigns, — or,  lastly,  for  the 
more  important  purpose  of  supporting  or  avenging 
a  friendly  sovereign,  whom  his  own  people  had 
risen  to  deprive  of  crown  or  life  in  hatred  of  his 
servility.  These  popular  risings,  as  before  noted, 
were  an  ominous  sign  of  the  times.  It  was  an  er- 
rand of  this  kind  which  took  Sargon  once  more 
into  Media,  this  time  not  into  the  usual  mountain 
districts,  but  into  a  flourishing  and  fertile  country 
of  hills  and  pastures  and  plains,  a  part  of  what  was, 
later,  Media  proper — the  Ellip  of  the  monuments. 
The  king  of  this  country,  an  aged  man  of  the  name 
of  Dalta,  had  at  one  time  been  persuaded  to  join 
the  rebel  Median  provinces,  but  had  very  soon 
prudently  withdrawn  from  the  dangerous  game  and 
won  Sargon's  regard  by  the  steadfastness  with 
which  he  kept  his  allegiance.  ''  Dalta  of  Ellip," 
he  tells  us  expressly,  ''was  subject  to  me,  and  de- 
voted to  the  worship  of  Asshur.  Five  of  his  towns 
revolted    and    no    longer   recognized   his   dominion. 


266  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

I  came  to  his  aid,  I  besieged  and  occupied  these 
towns,  I  carried  the  men  and  their  goods  away  into 
Assyria,  with  numberless  horses."  *'  I  gladdened 
the  heart  of  Dalta,"  we  are  told  by  another  text, 
''and  re-established  tranquillity  in  his  country."  On 
this  occasion  Sargon  pacified  several  more  districts 
which  either  had  rebelled  or  been  infected  by  wan- 
dering Median  tribes  from  the  eastern  steppes,  and 
received  the  submission  of  as  many  as  forty-five 
''chiefs"  of  Median  towns,  who  sent  several  thou- 
sands of  horses,  and  "  asses  and  sheep  an  innumer- 
able quantity." 

13.  Not  very  different  was  the  occasion  which 
drew  Sargon's  army  once  more  and  for  the  last 
time  to  the  shores  of  the  Western  Sea.  The  peo- 
ple" of  Ashdod,  the  Philistine  city,  had  risen,  put  to 
death  the  king  who  had  been  enthroned  by  the 
Assyrian  and  submissively  clung  to  his  protection, 
and  placed  in  his  stead  a  man  of  their  own  choice, 
a  certain  Yaman  (or  Yavan),  "  not  heir  to  the 
throne."  They  had  prepared  for  defence,  fortified 
the  city,  enclosed  with  a  deep  moat  or  ditch  ;  sup- 
plied it  w^ith  water  by  "  bringing  the  springs  of  the 
mountains."  The  people  of  Philistia,  Judah,  Edom 
and  Moab  "  were  speaking  treason.  The  people  and 
their  evil  chiefs,  to  fight  against  me,  unto  Pharaoh, 
the  king  of  Egypt,  a  monarch  who  could  not  save 
them,  their  presents  carried  and  besought  his  alli- 
ance." ^     Yet  with  all  these  preparations,  military 


*  Cylinder  discovered  and  translated  by  Geo.  Smith,  in  "  Assyrian 
Discoveries,"  pp.  290  ff. 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR,  267 

and  diplomatic,  such  was  the  terror  which  then  at- 
tended the  Assyrian  name,  that  on  the  mere  report  of 
the  army's  approach,  the  upstart  king  fled  to  the 
borders  of  Ethiopia, — ''and  no  trace  of  him  was 
seen," — leaving  "  his  gods,  his  wife  and  sons,  the 
treasures,  possessions  and  precious  things  of  his  pal- 
ace, together  with  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  to 
be  carried  into  captivity."  The  cities,  however,  ac- 
cording to  Sargon's  invariable  practice,  were  rebuilt 
and  filled  with  captives  from  the  East,  who  were 
made  '*  the  same  as  Assyrians."  As  to  the  help  from 
Egypt,  it  never  came,  any  more  than  it  had  come  to 
Samaria.  Indeed,  the  king  of  Ethiopia  (and  Egypt, 
since  the  Ethiopian  dynasty  was  still  reigning"^) 
threw  himself  on  the  Assyrian's  mercy,  bound 
Yaman  in  iron  chains  and  delivered  him.  By  this 
act  of  arrant  treachery,  this  breach  of  trust  and  hos- 
pitality,  a  further  respite  was  gained  for  Egypt. 

14.  It  appears  that  the  king  did  not  lead  this  expe- 
dition in  person,  although  he  speaks  of  it  in  the  first 
person  in  his  inscriptions.  The  prophet  Isaiah  ex- 
pressly says  that  the  "  Tartan  came  unto  Ashdod 
when  Sargon,  the  king  of  Assyria,  sent  him,  and  he 
fought  against  it  and  took  it  "  (xx.  1).  It  is  dif^- 
cult  to  find  out  from  the  monuments  every  time 
the  Assyrian  kings  sent  generals  to  conduct  a  cam- 
paign, because  they  mostly  relate  the  course  of  it 
in  their   own  name   and   take  the   credit  to  them- 

*  Such  is  the  opinion  of  E.  Schrader ;  but  some  other  scholars 
differ  from  him  and  think  the  country  named  here  is  not  Ethiopia. 
This  is,  however,  one  of  those  open  points,  a  discussion  of  whicli 
would  ill  suit  a  popular  narrative. 


268  ^-^-^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

selves ;  yet  it  is  certain  that  Sargon  must  have 
spent  some  of  his  time  in  his  own  kingdom,  for  he 
was  a  sovereign  who  attended  much  and  wisely  to 
affairs  at  home  ;  and  besides,  he  found  a  special  at- 
traction in  a  project  and  occupation  which  he  had 
greatly  at  heart,  and  of  which  more  anon. 

15.  There  was  nothing  now  any  longer  to  delay 
the  grand  closing  scene  of  this  stupendous  reign  : 
the  struggle  for  Babylon.  Twelve  years  the  Chal- 
dean had  sat  on  the  throne  of  the  great  South- 
ern capital  in  defiance  of  Sargon,  who,  after  inflict- 
ing a  passing  chastisement  on  his  ally  and  sup- 
porter, the  king  of  Elam,  had  been  forced  to  leave 
him  unmolested,  and  even  in  a  way  to  acknowledge 
him,  since  he  repeatedly  calls  him  ''king  of  Bab- 
ylon." Of  course,  however,  the  usurper's  insolent 
success  was  a  thorn  in  his  flesh,  and  a  sore  in  his 
eye,  and  the  longer  he  was  compelled  to  treasure  up 
his  revenge,  the  more  terrible  it  would  descend 
when  once  he  could  give  his  undivided  attention  to 
a  war  which  he  meant  to  be  crushing  and  deadly. 
One  thing  he  found  time  to  attend  to  even  in  the 
midst  of  the  manifold  occupations  with  which  those 
twelve  years  were  crowded.  He  took  care  to  keep 
on  excellent  terms  with  the  priesthood  of  Babylon 
and  the  other  great  temple-cities, — that  wealthy  and 
influential  class  being  at  the  head  of  the  discontent- 
ed party, — and  stimulated  their  loyalty  to  Assyria 
and  their  hatred  to  the  Chaldean  ruler,  on  whom 
they  looked  in  the  light  of  a  foreigner  and  intruder, 
by  frequent  and  great  gifts  to  the  different  temples, 
duly  recorded  in   his   inscriptions.     Merodach-Bala- 


THE  PRIDE  OE  ASSIIUR.  269 

dan,  on  his  side,  well  knew  that  the  day  of  reckoning 
must  come,  and  prepared  against  it,  by  using  all  the 
resources  at  his  command,  with  great  foresight  and 
activity.  In  the  first  place,  was  he  not  the  ''  king  of 
the  sea  ?  "  "  He  had  established  his  dwelling  amidst 
the  Sea  of  the  Rising  Sun  ;  he  trusted  in  the  sea  and 
the  retreat  of  the  marshes."  This  alludes  to  his  he- 
reditary principality  of  Bit-Yakin,  and  the  marshy 
tract  by  the  mouths  of  the  great  rivers  (which  were 
still  separate  at  that  time),  extending  all  the  way  to 
Elam,  and  affording  him  very  secret  means  of  com- 
munication and  flight  in  case  of  need.  But  more 
than  all  he  trusted  to  foreign  alliances  and  diplo- 
matic negotiations.  The  close  connection  which  he 
had  kept  up  with  the  king  of  Elam,  Sutruk-NaN- 
KHUNDI, — the  successor  of  his  former  friend,  Khum- 
banigash, — was  felt  to  be  insufficient,  and  Sargon 
complains  that  ''  against  the  will  of  the  gods  of  Bab- 
ylon, the  city  of  Bel  who  judges  the  gods,"  Mero- 
dach-Baladan,  "the  deceiver,  the  wicked,"  "  had  ex- 
cited all  the  nomadic  tribes  of  the  desert  against 
him,"  as  well  as  all  the  countries  of  Shumir  and 
Accad,  and  for  twelve  years  had  been  "  sending  out 
embassies."  Now  we  know  with  what  object  "  em- 
bassies were  sent  "  in  those  days.     (See  p.  74) 

16.  Of  one  such  embassy  we  find  a  detailed  and 
life-like  account  in  an  unexpected  quarter — in  the 
Hebrew  Book  of  Kings.  For  it  seems  that  Mero- 
dach-Baladan,  knowing  that  the  king  of  Judah, 
Hezekiah,  had  so  far  kept  a  strict  neutrality,  which 
he  did  not  break  even  when  the  sister-kingdom 
perished  miserably  under  his  eyes,  concluded  that 


2/0 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


the  Hebrew  monarch  would  be  a  useful  ally  to  se- 
cure, since  his  resources,  husbanded  during  a  long 
peace,  must  aniount  to  something  considerable,  and 
if  he  and  the  few  other  unannexed  Syrian  States 
could  only  be  brought  to  act  once  more  in  concert, 
they  might,  between  them,  even  yet  make  trouble 
for  Sargon,  when  he  should  be  engaged  in  the 
marshes  by  the  Gulf.  Now  it  so  happened  that 
Hezekiah  had  been  ill  almost  unto  death.  He  had 
set  his  house  in  order,  not  expecting  to  live,  and 
his  recovery  appeared  so  w^onderful  as  to  be  con- 
sidered miraculous.  The  fame  of  it  spread  through 
all  the  lands  ;  as  well  as  that  of  his  great  wealth  and 
prosperity.  The  Hebrew  Book  of  Chronicles  in- 
forms us  that  he  "  had  exceeding  much  riches  and 
honor;  and  he  provided  him  treasures  for  silver, 
and  for  gold,  and  for  precious  stones,  and  for  spices, 
and  for  shields,  and  for  all  manner  of  goodly  vessels  ; 
storehouses  also  for  the  increase  of  corn  and  oil, 
and  stalls  for  all  manner  of  beasts,  and  flocks  in 
folds.  Moreover,  he  provided  him  cities  and  pos- 
sessions of  flocks  and  herds  in  abundance,  for 
God  had  given  him  very  much  substance."  Such 
rumors  must  have  been  very  tantalizing  to  one  in 
so  great  need  of  treasure  and  support  as  Merodach- 
Baladan,  and  he  determined  to  find  out  just  how 
much  truth  there  w^as  in  them.  The  illness  and 
marvellous  recovery  of  Hezekiah  supplied  him  with 
an  opportunity  and  a  plausible  pretext  for  the  open 
sending  of  "■  an  embassy."  So  he  sent  letters  and 
a  present  to  Hezekiah. 

17.  We  can  well  imagine  the  stately  reception  of 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  27 1 

the  ambassadors,  and  the  great  flourishes  of  Oriental 
courtesy  with  which  they  discharged  their  ostensible 
mission.  That  the  conference  soon  touched  on 
other  things,  and  that  the  wily  Chaldeans  began  to 
draw  out  the  Jewish  monarch  by  flattering  his  vanity, 
we  are  left  to  infer  from  the  statement  immediately 
following:  ''And  Hezekiah  hearkened  unto  them, 
and  showed  them  all  the  house  of  his  precious  things, 
the  silver,  and  the  gold,  and  the  spices,  and  the  pre- 
cious oil,  and  the  house  of  his  armor,  and  all  that 
was  found  in  his  treasures  ;  there  was  nothing  in  his 
house,  nor  in  all  his  dominion,  that  Hezekiah  showed 
them  not."  The  good  king  evidently  had  somewhat 
lost  his  head  in  his  pride  and  self-complacency,  and 
acted  on  impulse  without  the  advice  or  even  knowl- 
edge of  his  wisest  councillor,  for  we  are  next  told 
that,  ''  Then  came  Isaiah  the  prophet  unto  King 
Hezekiah,  and  said  unto  him,  What  said  these  men? 
and  from  w^hence  came  they  unto  thee?  And  Hez- 
ekiah said,  They  are  come  from  a  far  country,  even 
from  Babylon."  This  curt  and  anything  but  can- 
did answer  still  further  aroused,  or  rather  confirmed 
the  suspicions  of  the  prophet-minister,  who  then 
asked  the  king  point-blank  :  "  What  have  they  seen 
in  thine  house?"  Thus  taken  directly  to  task, 
Hezekiah  defiantly  told  the  whole  truth :  "  All 
that  is  in  mine  house  have  they  seen  ;  there  is  noth- 
ing among  my  treasures  that  I  have  not  showed 
them."  Then  Isaiah  was  very  wroth,  for  he  knew 
that  a  great  harm  had  been  done,  since  accounts  of 
the  embassy,  and  the  treasures  and  the  secret  con- 
ferences, were  sure  to  reach  the  ear  of  the  king  of 


2/2 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


Assyria,  whose  spies  and  agents  were  at  all  the 
allied  or  vassal  courts.  And  the  prophet,  in  no  gentle 
or  measured  terms,  told  the  king  what  the  conse- 
quences of  his  folly  would  be  at  a  not  very  distant 
future  time  :  "  Hear  the  word  of  Yahveh :  Behold, 
the  days  come  that  all  that  is  in  thine  house,  and 
that  which  thy  fathers  have  laid  up  in  store  unto 
this  day,  shall  be  carried  to  Babylon."  And  he 
added  that  "even  the  king's  sons  should  be  taken 
away  and  become  servants  in  the  palace  of  the 
king  of  Babylon."  By  this  time  Hezekiah  had 
become  conscious  of  his  blunder,  and  his  reply  to 
this  terrible  threat  shows  some  shamefacedness,  not 
untinged  with  sullenness :  *'  Good  is  the  word  of 
Yahveh  which  thou  hast  spoken.  Is  it  not  so, 
if  peace  and  truth  shall  be  in  ;;/j/days.^"  If  Judah 
really  was  implicated,  together  with  Edom  and 
Moab,  in  the  rising  of  Ashdod,  as  we  are  given  to 
understand  on  Geo.  Smith's  cylinder  (see  p.  36), 
it  was  perhaps  in  consequence  of  this  "  embassy." 
No  serious  consequences,  however,  seem  to  have 
come  of  it,  at  all  events  until  the  next  reign. 

18.  The  moment  Sargon  was  secure  and  disen- 
gaged on  all  sides,  Merodach-Baladan  knew  his  time 
had  come,  and  bravely  opened  hostilities  by  refus- 
ing to  send  tribute.  Sargon,  who  throughout  this 
campaign  elaborately  acts  the  part  of  champion  to 
the  gods  of  Babylonia  and  deliverer  of  the  great 
Southern  capital  and  temple-cities,  solemnly  prefaces 
his  narrative  with  the  announcement  that  Marduk 
himself,  the  great  god  of  Babylon — (it  is  noteworthy 
that  Asshur  is  not  mentioned  on  this  occasion,  nor 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  273 

any  of  the  special  gods  of  Assyria) — chose  him 
among  all  the  kings  as  his  avenger,  *'  elevated  his 
head  in  the  land  of  Shumir  and  Accad,  and  aug- 
mented his  forces,  in  order  to  make  him  prevail 
against  the  Chaldeans,  a  people  rebellious  and  per- 
verse." He  knew  that  he  had  to  do  with  no  de- 
spicable foe.  Yet  in  the  conflict  which  now  began, 
the  Chaldeans  were,  from  the  first,  not  triumphant. 
Sargon  displayed  consummate  generalship,  marching 
down  with  an  army  divided  into  two  corps,  of  which 
he  commanded  one  himself.  The  fortresses  which 
protected  Babylonia  from  the  north  yielded  to  the 
king's  advance,  and  the  nomadic  Aramaean  tribes,  as 
well  as  some  Babylonian  ones,  who  had  been  detailed 
to  the  north  as  a  sort  of  light  vanguard  to  receive 
and  detain  the  enemy,  having  been  beaten,  at  once 
dispersed.  The  other  army  corps,  meanwhile,  oper- 
ating east  of  the  Tigris,  was  harassing  Elam,  taking 
from  it  fortresses  and  whole  districts,  not  to  speak 
of  captives,  cattle  and  other  plunder,  and  preventing 
the  junction  between  the  Elamite  and  Chaldean 
forces.  Thus  Sargon,  cautiously  but  steadily  ad- 
vancing, crossed  the  Euphrates  and  took  up  his 
headquarters  in  one  of  the  Chaldean  cities. 

19.  Merodach-Baladan  did  not  wait  for  him  in 
Babylon.  In  the  hope  that  he  might  even  yet  ob- 
tain the  necessary  support  from  Elam,  if  he  went 
over  personally,  he  left  the  capital  ''  in  the  night- 
time, like  an  owl,"  and  reached  Elam,  by  a  route 
which  he  succeeded  in  keeping  secret.  He  found 
Sutruk-Nankhundi,  who  had  fled  *'  into  the  far 
mountains  to  save  his  life,"  unwilling  to  engage  any 
18 


274  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

deeper  in  so  risky  a  struggle.  In  vain  Merodach- 
Baladan  offered  such  valuable  presents  as  he  could 
at  the  moment  dispose  of :  his  throne,  his  sceptre, 
his  royal  parasol,  all  of  pure  silver,  "  a  considerable 
weight,"— the  Elamite  was  deaf  to  arguments  and 
bribes.  Then  the  Chaldean,  in  his  anger,  took  by  vio- 
lence and  drove  away  as  much  cattle  as  he  could  lay 
hands  on,  and  returned  by  the  same  secret  ways  by 
which  he  had  come — not  to  Babylon,  but  to  his  own 
capital  by  the  sea,  DuR  Yakin,  which  he  proceeded 
to  prepare  for  a  last  and  desperate  stand. 

20.  For  Babylon  was  no  longer  open  to  him.  No 
sooner  had  he  left  in  that  abrupt  and  undignified 
manner,  than  a  solemn  and  worshipful  delegation 
from  that  city  and  its  great  suburb,  Borsip,  com- 
posed of  high  dignitaries  and  officers,  and  also 
*'  learned  men  of  books," — doubtless  priests, — went 
forth  to  seek  Sargon  at  his  headquarters,  bearing 
with  them  images  of  the  two  cities'  tutelary  deities, 
Bel  and  Nebo,  with  their  consorts,  and  to  entreat 
him  to  take  possession  of  the  deserted  capital, 
which  he  immediately  did,  and  not  only  offered  ex- 
piatory sacrifices,  but  during  the  interval  of  calm 
which  followed,  was  allowed  to  perform  that  myste- 
rious and  hallowing  ceremony  which  is  described  as 
''taking  the  hands  of  Bel."  This  was  the  work  of 
the  first  year's  campaign. 

21.  Merodach-Baladan,  in  the  mean  time,  was  still 
in  full  possession  of  his  own  principality,  and  had  in- 
trenched himself  in  his  capital  of  Dur-Yakin,  whither 
he  had  transported  ''  the  gods  living  in  "  several  other 
cities,  to  save    them    from    capture.     He   also    had 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  275 

forced   a  contribution   from    Ur,  Larsam   and   other 
Babylonian  cities,  and,  it  would  appear,  had  carried 
away  their  gods,  too,  but   not   in   a   friendly  spirit. 
He  had  surrounded  the  city  with  a  deep  and  wide 
moat,  which  he  had  filled  with  water  from   the  Eu- 
phrates by  means  of  trenches  dug  for  the  purpose, 
and  which,  after  providing  the   moat  with  a  dam,  he 
cut  off.     Nothing  had  been  neglected;  yet  such  was 
the  generalship  of  Sargon,  the  consummate  skill  and 
bravery  of  his  soldiers,  and  such  also  the  prestige  of 
invincibility  which  attended  on  his  name,  that  Dur- 
Yakin  fell  at  once,  at  the  first  onslaught.     Merodach^ 
Baladan  fled   into  the   citadel,  leaving  his  own  tent, 
with  all  its  royal  belongings,  to  the  conqueror  ;   the 
city  was  taken,  his  palace  utterly  despoiled  of ''  gold 
and  silver,  and  all  that  he  possessed,  the  contents  of 
his  palace,  whatever  it  was,  with  considerable  booty 
from   the    town."     In   one   inscription  we   are   told 
that  not  only  his  wife,  his  sons  and  daughters  were 
made     prisoners,    but     Merodach-Baladan    himself. 
Another  merely  says  :  "  And  this  Merodach-Baladan 
recognizing  his  own  weakness,  was  terrified  ;  the  im- 
mense fear  of  my  royalty  overwhelmed  him  ;  he  left 
his  sceptre  and  his  throne  ;  in  the  presence  of  my 
ambassador  he  kissed  the  earth  ;  he  abandoned  his 
castles,  fled,  and  his  trace  was  no  more  seen."     This 
account  must  be  the  more  correct,  or  else  he  must 
have  been    very   poorly   guarded    for   a   captive    of 
so  much  importance,  since  it  is  a  fact  that  he  escaped 
and  vanished  from  the  scene,— for  a  time,  having  by 
no  means  thrown  up  the  game,  as  will  appear. 
22.  As  for  the  city  of  Dur-Yakin,  it  was  razed  to  the 


2^6  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

ground,  or  rather,  in  the  literal  language  of  the  in- 
scriptions, made  a  heap  of.  There  were  in  it  a  cer- 
tain number  of  people  from  Sippar,  Nipur  and  Bab- 
ylon, who  had  probably  been  brought  there  and  de- 
tained against  their  will.  These  Sargon  sent  back 
to  their  respective  cities,  in  honor  and  peace,  and 
*'  watched  over  them,"  restoring  to  their  cities  cer- 
tain lands  which  had  been  taken  from  them  years 
before  by  some  nomadic  tribes,  now  auxiliaries  of 
Merodach-Baladan,  and  famous  for  their  skill  in  arch- 
ery. The  nomadic  tribes,  Sargon  tells  us,  he  replaced 
under  his  yoke,  and  restored  the  forgotten  land 
boundaries.  To  complete  the  redress  of  grievances 
and  wrongs,  he  restored  to  the  different  cities  the 
gods  that  had  been  carried  out  of  them,  and  revived 
the  laws  and  observances  which  had  been  neglected. 
Having  done  all  these  things,  he  returned  to  Bab- 
ylon, where  he  was  rapturously  received,  and  de- 
lighted the  priesthood's  hearts  by  his  lavish  bounties 
to  the  great  temples. 

23.  A  great  prestige  must  have  attached  to  the 
name  of  Sargon,  if  we  judge  from  the  ease  with 
which  he  triumphed  over  formidable  obstacles ; 
from  the  feebleness  of  the  resistance  he  encountered 
where  preparation  had  been  made  for  a  desperate 
stand  ;  and  especially  from  the  terror  his  fame  in- 
spired in  remote  countries,  as  shown  by  the  volun- 
tary submissions  he  received.  Of  these,  none  seems 
to  have  flattered  his  vanity  more  than  an  embassy 
from  seven  kings,  ruling  small  principalities  in  the 
Island  of  Cyprus  (probably  originally  Phoenician 
colonies).     This  island   he  calls  Yatnan,   and  with 


THE  FRIDE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


277 


some  exaecreration  describes  it  as  situated  "  at  adis- 
tance  of  seven  days'  navigation,  in  the  midst  of  the 
Sea  of  the  Setting  Sun."  As  he  adds  that  the  very 
names  of  these  countries  had  been  unknown  to  the 
kin^^s  his  fathers  from  the  remotest  times,  this  little 
blunder  may  be  due,  not  so  much  to  love  of  boast- 
ing as  to  pardonable  ignorance.  Anyhow,  it  is  with 
great  complacency  that  he  tells  how  those  seven 
kings,  after  the  news  of  his  great  deeds  in  Syria,  and 
the  humiliation  of  the  king  of  Chaldea,  "  which 
they  heard  far  away,"  "  subdued  their  pride  and  hum- 
bled themselves,"  and  ''  presented  themselves  be- 
fore him  in  Babylon,  and  brought — (more  probably 
sent) — gold,  silver,  utensils,  ebony,  sandal-wood  and 
the  manufactures  of  their  country,  and  kissed  his 
feet."  He  doubtless  received  these  advances  with 
becoming  graciousness,  and,  in  return  for  the  gifts 
they  brought,  gave  the  ambassadors  a  marble  stele 
with  a  full-length  sculptured  portrait  of  himself, 
and  a  short  inscription  commemorating  his  principal 
deeds.  This  stele  was  dutifully  set  up  in  one  of  the 
cities  of  Cyprus,  for  there  it  was  found  in  a  fine 
state  of  preservation,  and  is  now  one  of  the  orna- 
ments of  the  Museum  in  Berlin. 

24.  A  s-hort  time  before,  Sargon  had  received  in 
the  same  manner  the  gifts  and  homage  of  a  king  of 
DiLMUN,  an  island  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  now  included 
in  the  lowlands  of  the  coast,  and  also  that  of  certain 
allies  of  the  Armenian  Urza  in  the  mountains  of 
the  North-west  who  had  given  much  trouble  to  his 
governors,  and  who  now  at  last  threw  up  the  game  as 
hopeless,  and  sent  their  submission  all  the  way  to 


2J% 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


the  royal  camp,  ''  by  the  shore  of  the  Eastern  Sea  ' 
(the  Persian  Gulf).  Here,  in  reality,  ends  the  record 
of  Sargon's  personal  military  career.  True,  the 
peace  was  broken  twice  more  during  his  reign,  once 
by  a  slight  disturbance  in  Urartu,  where  Urza's  suc- 
cessor already  began  to  stir,  and  once  by  a  short 
war  with  Elam  ;  but  the  king  left  the  command  to 
his- generals,  having  himself  retired  to  Assyria. 
This  last  conflict  was  caused  by  a  disputed  succes- 
sion. Dalta,  the  king  of  Ellip,  had  been,  while  he 
lived,  devoted  to  the  rule  of  Asshur.  But  ''the  in- 
firmities of  age  came,  and  he  walked  on  the  path  of 
death."  Then  his  two  sons,  by  different  wives, 
''  each  claimed  the  vacant  throne  of  his  royalty,  the 
country  and  the  taxes,  and  they  fought  a  battle." 
One  of  them  "  applied  to  Sutruk-Nankhundi,  king 
of  Elam,  to  support  his  claims,  giving  to  him  pledges 
for  his  alliance."  The  other  brother,  on  his  side, 
implored  Sargon  to  uphold  his  claim,  promising 
allegiance.  No  less  than  seven  Assyrian  generals 
were  sent  to  his  assistance,  and  of  course  the  Elam- 
ite  and  his  friend  were  routed. 

25.  Now  at  length  Sargon  had  leisure  to  devote 
himself  to  a  peaceful  and  artistic  task  which  he  had 
for  years  been  planning  with  great  love,  and  of 
late  begun  to  put  into  execution,  giving  to  it  his 
personal  attention,  at  odd  moments,  and  all  the 
time  he  could  spare  from  an  Assyrian  monarch's 
everlasting  round  of  military  duties.  This  task  was 
the  construction  of  a  new  royal  residence  and  city 
entirely  separate  from  the  former  capitals.  Nineveh 
had  lono;;  been  neglected,   Kalah  having   been    the 


^mi 


.^^ 


n 


M 


Iff 


Q 

w 
<; 

Pi 

O 

X 

o 
c 

o 


279 


2  8o  ^-^^  -^ ^<^^  y  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

favorite  residence  of  the  kings  ever  since  Asshur-na- 
zirpal  had  rebuilt  and  embellished  it.  (See  p.  164.) 
The  new  palace  and  city  were  called  by  the  builder's 
name,  Dur-Sharrukin — ''  the  city  of  Sargon."  It 
is  this  palace  which  was  entombed  in  the  mound  of 
Khorsabad,  first  excavated  by  Botta  in  1842.^  The 
history  of  its  construction  is  most  interesting,  and 
will  be  best  given  in  the  words  of  Sargon  himself, 
who  tells  it  at  great  length  in  two  inscriptions,  that 
on  the  bulls  aiid  that  on  a  foundation  cylinder,  and 
in  as  solemn  though  more  concise  a  form  in  both 
his  great  historical  inscriptions.  In  fact,  the  mon- 
umental literature  of  the  lower  empire  is  so  very 
superior  to  the  documents  of  the  older  period  that 
it  is  a  pleasure  to  reproduce  it,  and  the  story  of 
this  entire  last  century  of  Assyria  gains  in  interest 
and  vividness  in  proportion  as  it  is  told  in  the 
quaint,  impressive,  and  often  picturesque  language 
of  the  texts. 

26.  "  Day  and  night  I  planned  to  build  that 
city,"  Sargon  informs  us,  "  to  erect  dwellings  for 
the  great  gods,  and  palaces,  the  dwelling  of  my 
royalty,  and  I  gave  the  order  to  begin  the  work." 
The  site  chosen  was  that  of  an  exceedingly  ancient 
city  at  the  foot  of  a  mountain  named  MUZRI,  some 
distance  above  Nineveh, — a  city  which  had  been 
uninhabited  and  in  ruins  from  the  oldest  times,  its 
canal  having  been  suffered  to  get  choked  up  and  go 
dry.     The  work  -was  begun    probably  in    712,    and 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  14-17. 


U 

< 


o 

< 
Pi 
O 
f- 
co 
W 
f4 


< 
< 

en 

CS 
O 

K 

< 

u 

►J 

< 


o 
o 
Pi 

< 


00 


I'iiim 


^'"^  ■  ..'^ 


;yj(  '    '    {*  '       I         V  /i-    /    '    ?  )^    III  I     ' 


381 


282 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


it  is  very  probably  in  order  to  be  on  the  spot  and 
superintend  it  that  Sargon  entrusted  the  expedition 
against  Ashdod  to  his  Turtan  (see  p.  267).  He 
began  by  planting  around  the  future  city  a  vast 
park,  in  imitation  of  the  woodland  scenery  of  the 
Amanos  Mountains  ;  he  planted  it  densely  with 
''every  species  of  timber  that  grows  in  the  land  of 
Khatti  and  every  kind   of  mountain   herbs."      No 


f|li|i^W|r|Pig^^^ 


^g. — WALL   AND   GATE   OF    DUR-SHARRUKIN,    AS   CLEARED    BY   THE 

EXCAVATIONS. 


suspicion  of  violence  or  evil-dealing  was  to  stain 
the  fair  beginnings  of  the  new  city  and  endanger  its 
prosperity  by  drawing  down  on  it  the  disfavor  of 
the  great  gods,  who  were  to  be  invited  to  take  up 
their  abode  in  it.  Like  David  and  Omri,  he  bought 
at  a  just  price  the  hill  he  had  chosen.  Alluding  to 
one  of  the  meanings  of  his  name  (see  p.  252)  Sar- 
gon declares :  "  In  accordance  with  the  name  I  bear, 
and  which  the  gods  gave  me  that  I  might  be  the 
guardian  of  right  and  justice,  govern  the  powerless, 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


283 


not  harm  the  weak,"^^  I  paid  the  price  for  the  land 
for  the  city,  after  the  tablets  appraising  its  value,  to 
the  owners  thereof ;  and  in  order  to  do  no  wrong,  I 
gave  to  those  who  did  not  Avish  to  take  money  for 
their  land,  field  for  field,  wherever  they  chose.  .  .  ." 
"  The  pious  utterance  of  my  lips  to  bless  it  pleased 
the  exalted  prophets,  my  masters,  and  to  build  the 
city,  and  dig  the  canal,  they  gave  the  command." 
Not  only  the  act  of  laying  the  foundation,  but  even 
the  fabrication  of  the  bricks,  the  heaping  up  of 
the  platform  proceeded  under  the  consecration  of 
prayer,  sacrifice,  uplifting  of  hands  and  pouring  out 
of  drink-offerings,  on  particularly  festive  and  holy 
days,  in  months  sacred  to  appropriate  divinities. 
This  entire  passage  is  brimful  of  mythological 
points,  and  allusions  to  religious  observances,  which 
it  would  be  highly  interesting  to  elucidate  com- 
pletely, but  unfortunately  the  material  bearing  on 
these  subjects  is  as  yet  insufficient. 

27.  The  first  buildings  that  rose  were  temples  to 
most  of  the  great  gods.  Then  the  palace  *^  of  ivory, 
of  the  wood  of  the  palm,  the  cedar,  the  cypress" 
and  other  precious  timber  ;  with  ''  a  vestibule  after 
the  manner  of  Hittite  palaces  ;  "  w^itli  doors  of  palm 
and  cypress  wood  overlaid  with  brilliant  bronze 
(probably  like  those  of  Balawat,  see  p.  192).  The 
city,   of  which   nothing  could  be  found  but  traces 


*  This  passage  rather  goes  against  the  theor)'  that  Sargon  chose 
his  name  himself  when  he  became  king ;  for,  had  he  done  so,  he 
could  hardly  have  said  that  the  gods  gave  it  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  find  here  some  confirmation  of  the  view  that  he  drew  a  loftv 
moral  from  that  name-     (See  p.  252.) 


284 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


of  well-paved  streets,  had  eight  gates,  named  for 
the  principal  gods  :  two  to  the  east,  for  Shamash 
and  Raman  ;  two  to  the  north,  for  Bel  and  Belit ; 
two  to  the  west,  for  Anu  and  Ishtar  ;  two  to  the 
south,  for  Ea,  and  the  "  Queen  of  the  gods."  The 
walls   were    named    for   Asshur   and    the    ramparts 


1  >^ 

f.sl 

1 

■* 

v=-J- 

Mm 

f£ 


rWrm 


->^-^'^:tj^ 


50. — GATEWAY   AT    DUR-SHARRUKIN    (RESTORED). 


for  Nineb.  These  gates  must  have  been  sumptu- 
ous beyond  words,  guarded  by  their  symmetri- 
cal pairs  of  colossal  winged  bulls,  of  placid  and  ma- 
jestic mien,  and  set  in  the  panelled  wall,  with  the 
same  wonderfully  effective  monsters  striding  in  pro- 
file, on  both  sides  of  the  gigantic  figure  of  Izdubar 
and  the  Lion.  (See  Nos.  51  and  52.)  A  great  bless- 
ing is  specially  called  down  on  them  in  the  closing 
invocation  :  "  May  Asshur  bless  this  city,  and  this 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR. 


285 


palace  !  May  he  invest  these  constructions  with  an 
eternal  brightness  !  May  he  grant  that  they  shall 
be  inhabited  until  the  remotest  days  !  May  the 
sculptured  bull,  the  guarding  spirit,  stand  forever 
before  his  face !  May  he  keep  watch  here  night 
and  day,  and  may  his  feet  never  move  from  this 
threshold !  " 

28.  It  would  take  an  entire  chapter,  and  that  a 
long  one,  to  do  justice  to  all  the  beauties  of  that 
marvellous  construction,  Sargon's  palace,  the  most 
thoroughly  studied  and  described,  because  the  best 
preserved  of  the  Assyrian  ruins.  Not  a  detail  but 
was  of  rare  workmanship  and  exquisite  finish  *,  but 
want  of  room  limits  us  to  only  a  few  illustrating 
specimens.  (Nos.  53-57.)  Then  the  sculptures! 
the  quantity  of  them,  the  richness,  the  vari- 
ety !  Not  a  phase  of  the  royal  builder's  life  but  is 
amply  illustrated  in  them  ;  not  a  peculiarity  in  the 
countries  he  warred  against  but  is  faithfully  noted 
and  portrayed.  And  lastly — the  mass  of  them ! 
That  alone  would  be  imposing,  even  without  their 
artistic  worth.  Twenty-four  pair  of  colossal  bulls 
in  high-relief  on  the  outside  walls,  and  at  least  two 
miles  of  sculptured  slabs  along  the  inner  walls  of  the 
halls  !  "  I  am  aware,"  says  one  of  the  leading  ex- 
plorers, '*  how  peculiar  it  must  appear  to  value 
works  of  art  by  the  weight  and  yard,  but  this  com- 
putation is  not  meant  to  give  an  idea  of  the  artistic 
value  of  the  sculptures,  only  of  the  labor  expended 
on  them."  When  we  further  realize  that  the  entire 
work,  from  the  construction  of  the  platform  to  the 
ornamentation  of  the  walls  with  slabs, — which,  as  we 


f4 

P4 

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286 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSHUR.  287 

know,  were  sculptured  in  their  places,  not  done  in 
the  artistic  workshops  and  put  up  and  joined  after 
wards, — that  this  entire  work  was  performed  in 
barely  five  years,  we  feel  rather  appalled  than 
merely  astonished.  Yet  such  is  undoubtedly  the 
fact.  For  the  foundation  was  laid  in  712,  and  Sar- 
gon  entered  the  palace  to  live  in  it  in  707.  ''  To  ac- 
complish such  a  task  in  so  short  a  time  there  must 
have  been  a  great  number  of  sculptors  of  one  art- 
school  working  together.  A  nation  capable  of 
bringing  together  such  a  number  of  skilled  and 
thoroughly  trained  artists  must  have  been  very  ad- 
vanced in  culture.  By  the  unlimited  power  which 
they  possessed,  Assyrian  monarchs  could,  at  any 
given  moment,  collect  untold  numbers  of  laborers  to 
make  bricks,  to  erect  walls  and  terraces  ;  but  no 
mere  material  might  can  create  architects,  sculptors 
and  painters ;  iJiat  requires  social  conditions  in 
which  the  arts  have  long  held  their  place."  * 

29.  In  706  the  walls  of  the  city  were  consecrated. 
It  is  probable  that  the  inhabitants  destined  to 
people  it  were  only  then  allowed  to  take  possession. 
One  cannot  help  wondering  a  little  by  what  magic 
wand  a  city  population  could  be  made  to  order,  all 
in  a  moment.  It  is  almost  like  the  richly  furnished 
tables,  laden  with  good   things,  which   start   out  of 

*  Victor  Place,  quoted  in  Kaulen's  "  Assyrien  unci  Babylonien,"  p. 
54.  Of  all  modern  popular  books  on  these  su])jects,  that  of  Dr.  Fr. 
Kaulen  gives  by  far  the  most  detailed,  instructive,  intelligible  and  en- 
tertaining account  of  this  wonderful  palace.  See  also,  of  course,  the 
amply  illustrated,  but  more  technical  description  in  the  second  vol- 
ume of  Perrot  and  Chipiez. 


ie>  ^j^^£-i 


.^^ 


,^ 


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cm 


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vm 


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iLTiK^ 


^2. FACE   VIEW    OF    WINGED    BULL    IN   THE   GATES    OF   DUR- 

SHARRUKIN. 
288 


THE  PRIDE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


289 


the  ground  in"  fairy  stories.  Hut  an  Assyrian  king 
was  not  puzzled  at  such  trifles  ;  Sargon  tells  us  how 
he  did  it,  and  very  simple  it  is:  "  People  from  the 
four  quarters  of  the  world,  of  foreign  speech,  of 
manifold  tongues,  who  had  dwelt  in  mountains  and 
valleys  ....  whom  I,  in  the  name  of  Asshur  my 
lord,  by  the   might   of  my  arms  had  carried   away 


^*t1rt»' 


^2. — BATTLEMENTS  OF  THE  TERRACE  WALL  AT  DUR-SHARRUKIN, 
AND  DRAIN  PIPE.  (RESTORED  FROM  FRAGMENTS  FOUND  ON 
THE   SPOT.) 

into  captivity,  I  commanded  to  speak  one  language  " 
(Assyrian,  of  course),  ''  and  settled  them  therein. 
Sons  of  Asshur,  of  wise  insight  in  all  things,  I  placed 
over  them,  to  watch  over  them  ;  learned  men  and 
scribes  to  teach  them  the  fear  of  God  and  the 
King." 

30.  There  might  have  been  worse  fates  for  cap- 
tives, and  these  had  reason  to  thank  their  luck.     For 
19 


^r^'iiill 


X 


o 

in 

H 


K  G 

fa  <J 

O  C5 

fcd  O 

O  tai 

w  o 

< 
w 


o 

H 

<: 

o 
u 
w 
Q 


290 


Tim  PRIDE  OF  ASSIIUR. 


291 


Sargon  the  home-ruler  was  a  very  different  person 
from  Sargon  the  conqueror.  Once  he  had  made 
any  people  ''  one  with  the  Assyrians,"  he  adopted 
them  as  his  natural-born  subjects,  and  extended  to 
them  the  care  to  which  he  considered  these  entitled. 
And  he  had  very  strict  notions  of  the  duties  of  a 
sovereign  to  his  people,  duties  which  he  himself 
describes  with  some  detail.     He  calls  himself — 


55. —  THRESHOLD-SLAB    (RUG   PATTERN)    IN    SARGON'S   PALACE. 

(khorsabad). 


"  The  inquiring  king,  the  bearer  of  gracious  words,  who  applied  his 
mind  to  restore  settlements  fallen  into  decay,  and  cultivate  the  neigh- 
boring lands  ;  who  directed  his  thoughts  to  make  high  rocks,  on 
which  in  all  eternity  no  vegetation  had  sprouted,  to  bear  crops;  who 
set  his  heart  on  making  many  a  waste  place  that  under  the  kings  his 
fathers  had  never  known  an  irrigation  canal,  to  bring  forth  grain  and 
resound  with  glad  shouts  ;  to  clear  the  neglected  beds  of  water  courses, 
open  dykes  and  feed  them  from  above  and  below  with  waters  abundant 
as  the  flood  of  the  sea  ;  a  king  of  open  mind,  of  an  understanding  eye 
for  all  things  ....  grown  up  in  council  and  wisdom,  and  discern- 
ment, to  fill  the  storehouses  of  the  broad  land  of  Asshur  with  food 
and  provisions,  to  overflowing,  as  beseems  the  king  •  .   .   ,  not  to  let 


292 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


oil,  that  gives  life  to  man  and  heals  sores,  become  dear  in  my  land, 
and  regulate  the  price  of  sesame  as  well  as  of  wheat." 

(Sesame  being  a  grain  which  is  grown  in  all  the 
East  for  the  sake  of  its  oil.)  This  last  touch  es- 
pecially shows  us  a  monarch  anxious  for  the  welfare 
of  his  people,  even  in  the  smallest  details.  The 
whole  passage  makes  us  deeply  regret  that  there 
were   not   many  more  of  the  same  kind,  allowing 


£*ini-F!mr  l^ailU&T  iisifil^O 


bp.CkChfliia 


56. — LION-WEIGHT    (ONE   OF    A    SET   FOUND   AT    KHORSABADI. 

an  insight  into  the  peaceful  pursuits  and  home  life 
of  the  times.  For  after  all,  those  fierce  and  cruel 
kings  must  have  been  in  some  ways  human,  and 
the  life  of  that  war-breathing  and  booty-craving 
people  must  have  been  made  up  of  something  else 
besides  fighting  and  plundering.  But  it  is  a  hope- 
less wish  :  the  Assyrian  kings,  in  their  ideas  of  his- 
tory, differed  vastly  from  us,  and  have  not  provided 
us  with  materials  for  such  a  reconstruction. 

31.  The  twofold  aspect  of  Sargon's  reign — and 
probably,  to  some  extent,  that  of  most  Assyrian 
monarchs — is  well  embodied  in  a  clause  of  the  final 
invocation  in  two  accounts  of  the  building  of  the 
new  city  and  palace,  and  a  statement  which  immedi- 


293 


2gA  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

ately  precedes  it.  While  the  one  prays  with  char- 
acteristic straightforwardness:  ''May  I  accumulate 
in  this  palace  immense  treasures,  the  booties  of  all 
countries,  the  products  of  mountains  and  valleys !  " 
the  other  says :  ''  With  the  chiefs  of  provinces,  the 
wise  men,  astronomers,  great  dignitaries,  the  lieu- 
tenants and  governors  of  Assyria,  I  sat  in  my 
palace  and  I  practised  justice."  ''And  may  it  be," 
further  prays  the  king,  "  that  I,  Sharru-Kenu,  who 
inhabit  this  palace,  may  be  preserved  by  destiny 
during  long  years,  for  a  long  life,  for  the  happiness 
of  my  body,  for  the  satisfaction  of  my  heart.  .  .  . 

32.  But  this  was  not  to  be.  Fifteen  months  after 
the  consecration  of  the  city  walls,  Sargon  fell,  mur- 
dered by  the  hand  of  an  unknown  assassin — per- 
haps no  very  astonishing  consummation,  when  we 
consider  of  what  elements  the  population  of  his 
city  was  composed. 

And  this  is  the  king  who,  by  some  inconceivable 
freak  of  chance,  had  dropped  out  of  history  as  com- 
pletely as  though  he  had  never  existed ;  whose 
name  was  known  from  a  single  mention  of  it  in 
Isaiah's  allusion  to  the  war  against  Ashdod  (see  p. 
267)  ;  whose  halls,  laid  open  by  Botta,  were  the  first 
Assyrian  halls  ever  entered  by  a  modern's  foot  ; 
and  whose  restoration  to  his  proper  place  in  the 
annals  of  mankind  we  owe  entirely  to  the  labors  of 
Assyriology. 


IX. 

THE    SARGONIDES. — SENNACHERIB      (SIN-AKI-IRIB). 

I.  Of  all  Assyrian  monarchs,  Sennacherib  is  the 
only  one  whose  name  has  always  been  familiar, 
whose  person   has  always  stood   out  real 

,    ,./,.,        .         ,  .  ,  r       11      1        r  Sennach- 

and  lifelike   in   the  midst  of  all  the  ran-      erib,  705^ 

681  B.C. 

tastical  fables,  miscalled  "  History  of  As- 
syria," which  we  of  an  older  generation  have  been 
taught,  like  our  forefathers  and  parents  before  us. 
For  this  one  glimpse  of  truth  in  the  midst  of  so 
great  a  mass  of  errors  and  lies  we  are  indebted  to 
the  Bible,  which  has  preserved  for  us,  in  three  differ- 
ent books,  an  account  of  this  king's  campaign  in 
Syria,  involving  the  fate  of  Jerusalem.  The  later 
Bible  books  (Second  Kings,  Second  Chronicles  and 
the  Prophets)  abound  in  passages  which  portray  the 
Assyrians  as  a  nation,  with  marvellous  accuracy  and 
the  most  picturesque  vividness ;  but  this  king  is  the 
only  individual  that  is  brought  out  so  dramatically. 
And  now  that  the  discovery  of  a  great  number  of 
cuneiform  texts  relating  to  the  same  period,  some 
of  them  very  long  and  well  preserved,*  has  put  us 
in  possession  of  so  many  facts  of  his  reign,  w^ith 
such   details,  too,  as  make  these  texts  anything  but 


*  See   "Story   of  Chaldea,"  ill.   No.   51,   the   so-called  "Taylor- 
Cylinder." 

295 


58. — sennacherib  on  his  throne  in  gala  apparel 

(koyunjik). 

296 


THE  SARGONIDES.— SENNACHERIB.  297 

a  dry  relation  of  events,  it  turns  out  that  the  ex. 
pcdition,  which  has  been  made  as  a  household  story 
to  us  by  the  Bible  narrative  and  Byron's  beautiful 
little  poem,''"'  is  really  one  of  its  most  prominent 
episodes;  the  interest  of  it,  too,  is  greatly  en- 
hanced by  the  fact  that  it  is  the  first  disastrous  cam- 
paign that  Assyria  had  to  record.  For  such  it  may 
be  pronounced,  notwithstanding  the  silence  of  the 
royal  annals,  as  we  shall  presently  see. 

2.  Sennacherib  was  a  son  of  Sargon.  He  was 
not  less  w^arlike  than  his  father,  yet  seems  to  have 
spent  at  home  a  far  larger  portion  of  his  reign 
of  twenty-five  years.  At  all  events,  in  the  docu- 
ments unearthed  until  now,  we  do  not  make  out 
more  than  eight  or  nine  campaigns,  and  they  cover 
nineteen  years  of  the  twenty-five.  He  had,  to  oc- 
cupy him,  a  task  exactly  similar  to  that  which 
Sargon  took  such  delight  in  :  he  built  palaces,  and 
turned  his  attention  to  restoring  the  long-neglected 
capital,  Nineveh,  to  more  than  its  ancient  splendor, 
as  it  was  there  he  permanently  resided,  and  not  in 
Dur-Sharrukin,  of  which  no  mention  whatever 
occurs  in  his  reign.  Perhaps  his  father's  fate  dis- 
gusted him  with  the  new  residence. 

3.  The  great  features  of  Sennacherib's  military 
career,  besides  the  Syrian  expedition,  directed  more 
especially  against  Egypt,  are  his  wars  with  the 
united  forces  of  Elam  and  Babylon,  For  the 
sacred    city    of    Marduk    was    no    longer   the    loyal 


*  "The    Destruction    of   Sennacherib:"'    "The    Assyrian    came 
down  like  the  wolf  on  the  fold,"  etc. 


2q8  the  story  of  ASSYRIA. 

friend  and  vassal  it  had  been  to  Sargon,  but  ap- 
pears to  have  been  thoroughly  won  over  to  the 
cause  of  revolt  and  independence,  and  in  the  con- 
fusion that  followed  that  king's  tragic  end,  Mer- 
odach-Baladan  re-appeared  on  the  scene,  and,  after 
two  years  of  civil  brawls,  succeeded  in  once  more 
proclaiming  himself  "  King  of  Kar-Dunyash."  He 
built  great  hopes,  as  usual,  on  the  support  of  Elam, 
but  does  not  seem  to  have  had  other  allies  at  the 
time,  except  the  same  Aramaean  and  Chaldean 
tribes  which,  on  a  former  occasion,  had  proved  any- 
thing but  a  tower  of  strength.  (See  p.  273.)  Yet  it  is 
in  this  time  that  several  historians  are  inclined  to 
place  the  ''embassy"  to  Hezekiah  of  Judah,  which 
others  contend  to  have  been  sent  about  ten  years 
before.  (See  p.  269.)  Unless  some  text  turn  up  to 
settle  the  question  by  positive  proof,  it  must  be 
considered  an  open  one  ;  and  we  may  be  well  con- 
tent to  leave  it  so,  so  long  as  the  fact  itself  is  es- 
tablished beyond  a  doubt. 

4.  "In  my  first  campaign,"  Sennacherib  reports,  "I  inflicted  a 
defeat  on  Merodach-Baladan,  king  of  Kar-dunyash,  and  on  the  army 
of  Elam,  his  confederate,  before  the  city  of  Kish.  In  that  battle  he 
abandoned  his  camp,  and  fled  alone,  to  save  his  life.  The  chariots, 
horses,  luggage  vans,  asses,  which  they  had  forsaken  in  the  confusion 
of  battle,  my  hands  captured.  Into  his  palace  at  Babylon  I  entered 
rejoicing,  and  opened  his  treasure-house." 

Here  follows  a  list  of  the  booty  and  captives,  to 
which  are  added  75  fortified  cities  of  Chaldea  and 
420  smaller  towns.  As  to  the  unfortunate  "  tribes," 
some  submitted,  and  those  who  did  not  were  "  forth- 
with   subdued."       From    the    enumeration     of    the 


THE  SARGONIDES.-SENNACHERIB.  299 

spoils  it  is  clear  that  they  led  a  pastoral  and  prob- 
ably half-nomadic  life:  "  208,000  people,  great  and 
small,  men  and  women;  7200  horses  and  mules; 
11,173  asses;  5230  camels;  80,100  oxen;  800,600 
sheep— a  vast  spoil,  I  carried  off  to  Assyria." 

5.  Merodach-Baladan  had  not  reigned  more  than 
six  months;  and  now  he  once  more  sought  safety  in 
the  only  refuge  where  he  could  hope  to  escape 
Assyrian  pursuit— in  his  own  native  marshes  of 
Bit-Yakin.  Some  search  was  made  for  him,  but  it 
was  soon  given  up,  and  Sennacherib,  whether  as  a 
sign  of  contempt,  or  in  order  to  fashion  an  obedient 
tool  to  his  hand,  placed  on  the  throne  of  Babylon 
Belibus,  the  son  of  a  learned  scribe  of  that  city,  a 
young  man,  who,  he  says,  ''  had  been  brought  up  in 
his  palace  like  a  little  dog"  {}  iniramc).^  It  is 
rather  remarkable  that  we  never  hear  again  of  this 
royal  nominee.  In  the  complicated  revolutions 
which  soon  after  ensue  he  is  entirely  ignored,  and 
in  later  inscriptions  his  appointment  is  not  men- 
tioned. From  this  silence  historians  shrewdly  con- 
clude that  he  proved  a  failure. 

*  This  amusing  expression  is  unfortunately  still  open  to  some 
doubt.  This  is  what  the  eminent  American  Assyriologist,  Dr.  D.  G. 
Lyon,  says  on  the  subject  (in  a  private  letter)  :  "  Mirofiii  seems  to 
be  some  kind  of  an  animal,  and  the  meaning  *  little  dog  '  is  accepted 
by  several  Assyriologists.  Still  I  do  not  consider  it  as  established 
that  it  is  the  dog."  The  general  meaning  of  the  passage,  however,  is 
clear:  it  somewhat  contemptuously  intimates  that  the  young  Baby- 
lonian had  been  in  some  way  made  a  pet  of,  brought  up,  very  likely, 
among  the  pages  of  the  royal  household.  This  is  about  the  only 
instance  in  Assyrian  literature  of  the  quality  we  call  himior — slightly 
tinged  with  grimness,  indeed  ;  but  it  were  not  Assyrian  else. 


300 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


6.  The  next  (second)  expedition,  against  the  very 
warHke  and  turbulent  mountain  tribes  of  the 
Kasshi  (Coss.eANS  of  classical  writers),^  is  of  some 
interest  because  of  the  details  we  are  given  concern- 
ing that  most  rugged  region  of  the  Zagros  range. 
These  tribes,  we  are  told,  had  never  yet  bowed 
themselves  to  the  Assyrian  kings,  and  were  proba- 
bly getting  troublesome.  The  dangers  and  diffi- 
culties of  a  march  into  those  unknown  fastnesses 
must  have  been  exceptionally  great,  for  the  king 
especially  mentions  that  "  Asshur,  his  lord,  gave  him 
courage  "  to  undertake  it.  ''  Through  tall  forests, 
on  ground  difficult  of  access,  I  rode  on  horseback, — 
my  litter  I  had  borne  along  with  ropes, — over  steep 
places  I  walked  on  my  feet."  f  The  campaign  was 
successful  and  carried  out  on  the  usual  plan :  the 
"  great  city  "  of  the  mountain  tribes  was  destroyed 
and  sacked,  then  rebuilt,  turned  into  an  Assyrian 
fortress  and  re-peopled  with  captives  from  other 
lands ;  a  stone  tablet  was  made  (probably  a  stele), 
with  an  account  of  the  expedition,  and  placed 
within  the  city.  This,  however,  was  not  the  end  of 
the  campaign.  The  Assyrian  army  was  marched 
right  through  the  Zagros  into  Ellip,  which  was 
ravaged  and  made  a  desert  of  *'  in  every  direction." 
The  king  of  Ellip, — the  same  who  had  been  as- 
sisted against  his  brother,  and  set  on  the  throne 
by  Sargon  (see  p.  279), — *' abandoned  his  strong 
cities,    his  treasures,  and   fled  to  a  distance."     His 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  228. 
t  After  Hoerning's  translation. 


301 


302 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


capital  was  burned  down,  together  with  numbers  of 
towns,  great  and  small,  and  another  city  raised  to 
the  dignity  of  ''  royal  city  "  of  tne  new  province, 
under  the  name  of  Dur-Sennacherib.  What  had 
been  his  offence  we  are  not  told  ;  but  it  is  probable 
that  he  joined  some  attempted  revolt  of  Median 
tribes,  for  the  vigorous  repression  dealt  to  him  appears 
to  have  terrified  even  the  remoter  tribes,  untouched 
as  yet  by  the  sword  or  the  yoke,  into  hasty  sub- 
mission ;  that  best  explains  the  paragraph  immedi- 
ately following,  where  the  king  thus  closes  the 
account  of  his  second  campaign  :  ''  On  my  way  back 
I  received  a  heavy  tribute  from  the  land  of  the  dis- 
tant Medes,  the  name  of  which  had  been  heard  of 
by  none  under  the  kings  my  fathers;  they  sub- 
mitted themselves  to  the  yoke  of  my  rule."  The 
complacency  of  this  statement  is  not  disturbed  by 
the  faintest  foreboding  that  these  very  "  distant 
Medes "  were,  only  one  hundred  years  later,  to 
occupy  the  place  of  those  Assyrians,  whom  they 
thus  timidly  conciliated. 

7.  In  the  mean  time  the  West  had  long  been  in  a 
dangerous  state  of  ferment,  not  the  less  dangerous 
that  it  was  more  than  usually  self-contained.  Five 
years  of  the  new  reign  had  passed,  and  no  outbreak 
had  yet  occurred  to  call  down  an  Assyrian  visitation. 
The  kings  of  the  West  were  biding  time  and  opportu- 
nity, and  especially  the  convenience  of  TiRHAKA 
(better  Taharka,  Assyrian  Tarku),  king  of  Egypt, 
the  third  monarch  of  the  Ethiopian  line.  He  was  to 
invade  Palestine,  and  his  appearance  to  be  the  signal 


THE  SARGONIDES.— SENNACHERIB. 


303 


of  concerted  risings.  The  preparations  for  such  an 
enterprise  could  not  be  carried  on  so  secretly  as  not 
to  reach  at  last  the  ears  of  the  Assyrian,  and  the 
knowledge  brought  him  quickly  down  to  the  sea- 
shore ;  in  their  rapidity  and  fury  of  onslaught  lay 
the  main  secret  of  that  people's  success  in  war. 

*'  Behold,"  says  the  prophet,  "they  shall  come  with  speed  swiftly  : 
none  shall  he  weary  nor  stumble  among  them  :  none  shall  slumber 
nor  sleep  ;  neither  shall  the  girdle  of  their  loins  be  loosed,  nor  the 
latchet  of  their  shoes  be  broken  :  whose  arrows  are  sharp,  and  all 
their  bows  bent ;  their  horses'  hoofs  shall  be  counted  like  flint,  and 
their  wheels  like  a  whirlwind :  their  roaring  shall  be  like  a  lion,  they 
shall  roar  like  young  lions  ;  yea,  they  shal)  roar  and  lay  hold  of  the 
prey,  and  carry  it  away  safe,  and  there  shall  be  none  to  deliver." 
(Isaiah,  v.  26-29.)  * 

"  The  Assyrian  came  down  like  the  wolf  on  the  fold, 
And  his  cohorts  were  gleaming  with  purple  and  gold  ; 
And  the  sheen  of  their  spears  was  like  stars  on  the  sea, 
When  the  blue  wave  rolls  nightly  down  deep  Galilee." 

They  came,  "  governors  and  rulers,  clothed  most 
gorgeously,  horsemen  riding  upon  horses,  all  of  them 
desirable  young  men"  (Ezekiel).  Never  had  king 
set  out  with  a  lighter  heart  than  did  Sennacherib  on 
this  his  famous  "  third  campaign,  into  the  land  of 
Khatti." 

8.  King  Hezekiah  of  Judah,  although  no  longer 


*  It  has  been  justly  remarked  that  "  we  have  no  contemporary 
passage  that  renders  more  vividly  and  visibly  the  impression  pro- 
duced in  Palestine  by  the  appearance  of  Assyrian  armies."  (B. 
Stade,  "  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel,"  p.  605.)  And  how  w^onder- 
fully  this  passage  is  interpreted  and  completed  by  the  sculptured  rep- 
resentations of  these  armies ! 


304  ^-^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

an  impetuous  youth,  had  ended  by  yielding  to  the 
Sennach-      ^^^^   counsels  of   the  war   party,  against 
suc^esSSi     ^^^^     better    judgment    of    the    cautious 
jS\h.^°^   prophet-minister,   who   was   never    weary 
701  B.C.       Q^  repeating  that  "  Egypt  helpeth  in  vain 
and  to  no  purpose  ;  "  that  ''  the  strength  of  Pharaoh 
should  be  their  shame  and  the  trust    in  the  shadow 
of  Egypt  their  confusion."      Prudence  was  thrown 
to   the    winds,   and    not   only   was  tribute   refused, 
but   active    hostile    demonstrations    were    indulged 
in.     "  The    chief    priests,    nobles    and    people    of 
Ekron   had  placed   Padi,  their  king,  who  kept  his 
treaties  and  sworn  allegiance  to  Asshur,  in  chains 
of  iron,  and    unto    Hezekiah,  king  of    Judah,    had 
delivered     him.      And    he    wickedly  shut    him    up 
in    a   prison."     After   such  a    breach    of   allegiance 
there   was    nothing    left    but    to    hasten    the    prep- 
arations   for   defence.       The    first    step  was   to  cut 
off  the   water   supply  from  the  expected   invaders, 
"  So  there  was  gathered  much  people  together,  and 
they  stopped  all  the  fountains  (wells)  and   the  brook 
that  flowed  through  the  middle  of  the  land,  saying, 
Why  should   the   king   of   Assyria   come    and   find 
much  water?  "  "     The  wall  of  the  city  also  was  built 
up    wherever   it  was  broken  down,  the  citadel   was 
strengthened,   weapons    and   shields  were    made  in 

*  The  Bible  chapters  referred  to  are  Second  Kings,  xviii.,  xix.; 
Second  Chronicles,  xxxii.;  Isaiah,  xxxvi.,  xxxvii. — a  literal  repeti- 
tion, with  very  slight  variations,  of  the  greater  part  of  the  narrative 
in  Second  Kings.  In  reconstructing  the  campaign  from  these  books 
and  the  Assyrian  monuments,  E.  Schrader's  interpretation  has  been 
mainly  followed,  in  '*  Keilinschriften  und  Altes  Testament." 
20 


THE  SARGONIDES.— SENNACHERIB.  305 

abundance  ;  captains  of  war  were  set  over  the  peo- 
ple, and  the  king  "gathered  them  together  to  him 
in  the  broad  place  at  the  gate  of  the  city,  and  spake 
comfortably  to  them." 

9.  Fortunately  for  Jerusalem,  Sennacherib  loi- 
tered on  his  way  down  the  sea-coast.  He  tarried  at 
Sidon,  the  king  of  which  had  fled  to  Cyprus,  to 
settle  the  affairs  of  the  city,  and  to  receive  the  per- 
sonal homage  and  tribute  of  several  other  Phoeni- 
cian kings,  as  well  as  those  of  Ammon,  Moab  and 
Edom.  Among  the  names  of  these  kings  we  find 
that  of  a  *' Menahem,  king  of  Samsiimiriina ;''  if 
the  name  stands  for  Saniirina  (Samaria)  it  would 
seem  that  Israel  was  even  yet  suffered  to  retain  a 
pale  phantom  of  royalty.  Then  Ascalon  had  to  be 
reduced  to  obedience,  with  the  usual  routine  of  ran- 
soming, transportation,  and  change  of  king.  It  was 
only  after  this  that  he  sent  a  detachment  of  his 
army  to  deal  retribution  on  the  offending  Hebrew 
state,  while  he  himself  proceeded  with  the  bulk  of  his 
forces  in  a  south-easterly  direction,  to  besiege  the 
important  fortified  city  of  Lakhish,  which  it  would 
have  been  a  great  blunder  to  leave  for  the  Egyp- 
tians to  occupy.  What  next  happened  was  nothing 
unusual :  "  Sennacherib,  king  of  Assyria,  came  up 
against  all  the  fenced  cities  of  Judah  and  took  them." 
The  conqueror  himself  is  more  explicit :  "  Forty-six 
of  his  strong  cities,  his  castles  and  the  smaller  towns 
of  their  territory  without  number,  with  warlike  en- 
gines, by  assault  and  storming,  by  fire  and  by  the 
axe,  I  attacked  and  captured.  200,150  people,  great 
and  small,  horses,  asses,  oxen  and  sheep  beyond  num- 


3o6  THE  S  TOR  Y  OF  ASS  YRIA . 

ber,  from  the  midst  of  them  I  carried  off  and  counted 
them  as  spoils.  Himself,  like  a  bird  in  a  cage,  inside 
Jerusalem,  his  royal  city,  I  shut  up.  I  cast  up  a 
mound  against  him  and  barred  the  issue  from  his 
city  gate."  And  the  Egyptians  still  tarried.  Then 
Hezekiah  was  fain  to  retract  and  try  conciliation. 
He  "  sent  to  the  king  of  Assyria  to  Lakhish,  saying: 
I  have  offended.  Return  from  me  ;  that  which  thou 
puttest  on  me  will  I  bear."  And  the  fine  imposed 
on  him  was  a  sum  equal  to  about  one  million  dol- 
lars in  gold  and  half  that  in  silver.  To  meet 
this  demand,  after  all  the  outlay  caused  by  his 
warlike  preparations,  he  was  forced  not  only  to 
empty  his  own  treasury  and  that  of  the  temple,  but 
to  cut  from  the  doors  and  the  pillars  of  the  latter 
the  gold  casing  with  which  he  himself  had  had  them 
overlaid  in  the  days  of  his  prosperity.  These  valua- 
bles he  sent  with  a  heavy  heart  to  the  king  before 
Lakhish,  together  with  the  person  of  Padi,  the  de- 
posed king  of  Ekron,  whom  Sennacherib  forthwith 
proceeded  to  restore  to  his  former  dignity.  The 
lands  taken  from  Judah  he  divided  among  this  same 
Padi  and  the  loyal  kings  of  Ashdod  and  Gaza,  not 
forgetting  to  increase  their  tribute  proportionately. 
10.  Lakhish,  meanwhile,  was  taken,  and  though 
the  siege  of  this  city  is  not  mentioned  in  the  great 
texts,  we  have  the  strongest  possible  evidence  for 
it  in  a  still  more  convincing  form,  for  it  is  repre- 
sented at  full  length  on  one  of  the  finest  wall-sculp- 
tureS,  occupying  several  slabs  in  a  hall  of  Sennach- 
erib's palace,  excavated  by  Layard  at  Koyunjik. 
We  give  the  concluding  scene  :     On  a  highly  orna- 


THE  SA  R  G  ONIDES.—SRNNA  CJIERIB. 


30; 


menteKd  throne,  the  beick  of  which  is  hung  with  some 
costly  drapery,  his  attendants  with  their  huge  fly- 
flappers  behind  him.  Sennacherib  is  seated  before 
his  tent,  on  a  knoll,  among  grape-laden  vines  and 
fruit-treesj  while  at  the  foot  of  the  knoll  his  chariot 
stands  with  its  driver;  two  grooms  holding  the 
heads  01  the  horses,  the  royal  parasol-bearer  at  the 
wheel,  and  the  royal  steed  held  by  a  soldier  behind. 
The  slaughter  has  not  yet  ceased,  but  a  high  officer, 
followed  by  soldiers,  stands  at  the  king's  foot-stool 
reporting,  probably  introducing  the  file  of  captives, 
who  wait  at  a  little  distance,  under  escort,  some 
prostrated,  others  standing,  all  with  hands  extended 
in  supplication.  An  inscription  overhead  interprets 
the  scene  in  these  express  words  :  "  Sennacherib, 
king  of  nations,  king  of  Assyria,  seated  on  an  ex- 
alted throne,  receives  the  spoils  of  the  city  of  Lakhish. 

II.  The  capture  of  this  important  bulwark  was  no 
sooner  accomplished  than  news  came  of  the  advance 
of  the  Egyptian  forces,  an  advance  which,  tardy  at 
first,  had  been  so  unexpectedly  rapid  at  the  last, 
that  Sennacherib  had  but  just  time  to  retrace  his 
steps  and  encounter  the  enemy  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Ekron.  Under  the  circumstances,  it  was  most  un- 
desirable for  him  to  have  in  his  rear  a  strong  royal 
city  held  by  a  doubtful  ally,  and  he  sent  to  demand 
of  Hezekiah  the  surrender  into  his  hands  of  Jerusa- 
lem. To  make  the  demand  doubly  impressive  he 
commissioned  with  it  his  highest  dignitaries,  the 
Turtan  (commander-in-chief),  the  Rabshakeh  (a 
general,  not  cup-bearer)  and  the  Rabsaris  (a  high 
officer  of  the  royal  household).     The  description  of 


3o8  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 

this  embassy,  as  given  in  the  Bible  books,  is  an  in- 
valuable piece  of  reality  and  local  coloring,  and 
brings  before  us  the  manner  in  which  such  half  mil- 
itary, half  diplomatic  transactions  were  conducted. 

12.  The  messengers  came  up  to  Jerusalem  and 
stood  before  the  walls.  They  "  called  to  the  king," 
and  three  officers  of  the  household  ''  came  out  to 
them."  The  Rabshakeh  was  spokesman.  He 
warned  the  king  against  trusting  to  that  ''  bruised 
reed,  Egypt,  whereon,  if  a  man  lean  it  will  go  into 
his  hand,  and  pierce  it ;  "  then  insidiously  bade  him 
not  to  put  his  reliance  in  the  Lord  his  God,  saying, 
"  Am  I  now  come  up  without  the  Lord  against  this 
place  to  destroy  it  ?  The  Lord  said  unto  me.  Go 
up  against  this  land  and  destroy  it."  This  was  a  tell- 
ing argument,  and  one  that  could  disastrously  in- 
fluence the  people,  who  were  intently  watching  and 
listening  from  the  top  of  the  w^all.  Therefore  the 
Jewish  negotiators  hastily  interrupted  the  orator 
with  the  request  that  he  would  speak  Aramaic  to 
them,  not  Hebrew,  "  in  the  ears  of  the  people  on 
the  wall."  This  admission  opened  to  the  Assyrian 
an  advantage  which  he  immediately  pursued.  He 
pretended  to  be  sent,  not  so  much  to  the  king  as  to 
the  Jewish  people,  to  whom  he  forthwith  addressed 
his  speech  : 

"  Hear  ye  the  word  of  the  great  king,  the  king  of  Assyria.  Thus 
saith  the  king :  Let  not  Hezekiah  deceive  you,  for  he  shall  not  be 
able  to  deliver  you  out  of  my  hand  ;  neither  let  Hezekiah  make 
you  trust  in  the  Lord,  saying,  The  Lord  will  surely  deliver  us,  and 
this  city  shall  not  be  given  into  the  hand  of  the  king  of  Assyria. 
Hearken  not  to  Hezekiah ;  for  thus  saith  the  king  of  Assyria  ;  Make 
your  peace  with  me,  and  come  out  to  me ;  and  eat  ye  every  one  of 


THE  SARGOXIDES— SENNACHERIB,  ^qq 

his  vine  and  every  one  of  his  fig-tree,  and  drink  ye  every  one  the 
waters  of  his  own  cistern  ;  until  I  come  and  take  you  away  to  a  land 
like  your  own  land,  a  land  of  corn  and  wine,  a  land  of  bread  and  vine- 
yards, a  land  of  oil,  olive  and  honey,  that  ye  may  live  and  not  die. 
And  hearken  not  to  Hezekiah  when  he  persuadcth  you,  saying, 
The  Lord  will  deliver  us.  Hath  any  of  the  gods  of  the  nations  ever 
delivered  his  land  out  of  the  hand  of  the  king  of  Assyria?  Where 
are  the  gods  of  ITamath,  and  of  Arpad  ?  .  .  .  Who  are  they 
among  all  the  gods  of  the  countries  that  have  delivered  their 
country  out  of  my  hand,  that  the  Lord  should  deliver  Jerusalem  out 
of  my  hand  ?  But  the  people  held  their  peace,  and  answered  him 
not  a  word  ;  for  the  king's  commandment  was,  saying.  Answer  him 
not." 

13.  The  Assyrian  envoys,  according  to  one  ac- 
count, delivered  a  letter  from  their  master  to  the 
king  of  Judah,  which  when  Hezekiah  received,  "he 
rent  his  clothes,  and  covered  himself  with  sack- 
cloth, and  went  into  the  house  of  the  Lord  ;  "  also 
he  sent  to  the  prophet  Isaiah  in  his  sore  distress. 
And  the  letter,  after  he  had  read  it,  "  he  spread  out 
before  the  Lord  "  and  prayed  aloud.  *'  Incline 
thine  ear,  O  Lord,  and  hear  !  Open  thine  eyes,  O 
Lord,  and  see  !  and  hear  the  words  of  Sennacherib, 
wherewith  he  hath  sent  him  to  reproach  the  living 
God  !...."  But  Isaiah  sent  an  encouraging  mes- 
sage to  the  king.  This  was  not  a  time  for  reproof 
but  for  help,  and  with  all  the  indignation  of  the 
patriot  and  the  priest,  he  uttered,  in  the  name  of 
Yahveh,  a  long  and  withering  prophecy  against  the 
invader,  which  is  summed  up  in  this  passage  :  ''  Be- 
cause of  thy  raging  against  me,  and  for  that  thine 
arrogancy  is  come  up  into  mine  ears,  therefore  will 
I  put  my  hook  in   thy  nose  and   my  bridle  in   thy 


3IO 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


lips,*  and  will  turn  thee  back  the  way  thou  earnest." 
So  the  king  took  comfort,  even  though  a  large  de- 
tachment of  the  Assyrian  army  now  came  and  en- 
camped under  Jerusalem. 

14.  The  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  forces,  mean- 
while, for  the  second  time  stood  face  to  face  (see  p. 
258,  battle  of  Raphia).  There  was  a  great  battle  near 
a  place  called  Eltekeh  (Assyrian,  Altaku)  and 
Sennacherib  claims  to  have  won  the  victory  ;  but 
his  account  is  brief,  feeble  and  somewhat  confused. 
He  speaks  of  capturing  Altaku  and  another  city, 
and  carrying  off  their  spoil,  but  without  the  usual 
details  and  precision.  At  all  events,  there  is  no 
question  of  tribute,  of  submission,  of  advancing  into 
the  defeated  enemy's  land.  On  the  contrary,  he 
passes  on  to  the  affairs  of  Judah,  and  then  inform- 
ing us  that  Hezekiah  gathered  a  great  treasure  of 
every  kind,  his  own  daughters  and  many  women 
from  his  palace  and  sent  tJicin  after  Jiivi  to  A^ine- 
veJi.  Of  how  he  happened  to  return  to  Nineveh, 
not  a  word. 

15.  The  fact  is  that  his  military  operations  for 
that  year  were  summarily  cut  short  independently 
of  human  agency.  A  plague  broke  out,  and  in  a 
short  time  carried  away  such  numbers  of  his  sol- 
diers that  he  was  fain  to  recall  the  detachment  that 
lay  before  Jerusalem,  and  beat  a  hasty  retreat. 
The  Bible  historians  describe  the  catastrophe  in 
truly  Oriental  poetic  style  :  ''  The  Angel  of  Yahveh 

*  This  would  seem  to  have  been  a  treatment  commonly  awarded  to 
criminals.     See  illustration  No.  46. 


THE  SARGONIDES.— SENNACHERIB.  oji 

went  forth  "  and  snnotc  the  Assyrians  in  their  camp, 
"  and  when  men  arose  in  the  morning,  behold,  they 
were  all  dead  corpses."  This  account  is  curiously 
corroborated  by  a  tradition  preserved  in  Egypt, 
and  heard  there  by  the  Greek  traveller  and  historian, 
Herodotus,  250  years  later,  of  how  Sennacherib,  king 
of  the  Arabs  and  Assyrians,  had  advanced  towards 
Egypt  to  invade  it,  and  how  the  pious  Egyptian 
king  prayed  for  divine  aid,  and  that  same  night  a 
swarm  of  mice  was  sent  into  the  Assyrian's  camp, 
and  destroyed  the  leathern  quivers,  shield-straps  and 
the  bowstrings,  so  that  they  were  virtually  disarmed, 
and  a  great  slaughter  was  made  of  them.  Now  the 
mouse  was,  in  the  East,  the  emblem  of  the  plague- 
boil,*  while  there  are  other  examples  in  Scripture  of 
the  destroying  angel,  or  ''Angel  of  Yahveh,"  as  the 
bearer  of  pestilence. f 

16.  During  the  next  year  another  scene  of  the 
great  Babylonian  drama  was  enacted.  The  old 
champion,  Merodach-Baladan,  had  not  thought  fit  to 
reappear  as  candidate  for  the  throne.     He  left  it  to  a 

*  B.  Stade,  '*  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel,"  p.  203  and  p.  621,  and 
First  Samuel,  v.  and  vi.,  where  the  Philistines,  smitten  with  plague- 
boils  tor  detaining  the  Ark  in  their  midst,  send  it  back  with  a  guilt- 
offerinji,  according  to  the  word  of  their  priests  and  diviners :  "  Five 
golden  tumors  and  five  golden  mice  ....  ye  shall  make  images  of 
your  tumors  and  images  of  your  mice  that  mar  the  land." 

t  See  Second  Samuel,  xxiv.  15-17,  where  a  pestilence  is  sent  upon 
Israel,  and  70,000  people  die.  "And  when  the  angel  stretched  out 
his  hand  towards  Jerusalem  to  destroy  it  the  Lord  repented  him  of 
the  evil,  and  said  to  the  angel  that  destroyed  the  people,  It  is 
enoucjh  ;  now  stay  thy  hand.  .  .  .  And  David  spake  unto  the  Lord 
wh^'t  he  saiv  the  angel  that  smote   the  people,  and  said,  Lo,  I  have 


312 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


younger  competitor,  SUZUB,  also  a  Chaldean  prince, 
*'  dwelling  within  the  marshes."  The  great  Taylor- 
Cylinder  gives  the  result  of  this  campaign,  begin- 
ning with  the  rout  of  Suzub  : 

"  He  himself  lost  heart  and  like  a  bird  fled  away  alone,  and  his  trace 
could  not  be  found.  I  turned  round  and  took  the  road  to  Bit-Yakin. 
Merodach-Baladan,  whom  in  the  course  of  my  first  campaign  I  had 
defeated,  and  whose  power  I  had  destroyed,  now  shunned  the  shock 
of  my  fiery  battle.  The  gods,  the  protection  of  his  country,  in  their 
arks  he  collected,  and  in  ships  he  transported  them,  and  to  the  city 
of  Nagitu  in  the  midst  of  the  sea,  like  a  bird  he  flew." 

This  city  seems  to  have  been  built  on  small  islets 
— something  like  Venice  in  her  lagunes — by  the 
opposite, — the  Elamite, — shore  of  the  Gulf,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  River  Ulai  (classical  EULAEOS), 
which  then  flowed  into  the  Gulf,  at  a  great  dis- 
tance from  the  mouths  of  the  Tigris  and  the  Eu- 
phrates, while  now  it  joins  the  Shatt-el-arab,  still 
many  miles  inside  of  the  coast  line.     (See  map.) 

"  His  brothers,  the  seed  of  his  father's  house,  whom  he  had  left  on 
the  sea-shore,  and  the  rest  of  the  people  of  his  land,  from  Bit-Yakin 
within  the  marshes  and  reeds,  I  brought  away,  and  counted  them  as 
spoil.  Once  more  his  cities  I  destroyed,  overthrew  them  and  made 
them  even  with  the  ground.  Upon  his  ally,  the  king  of  Elam,  I 
poured  the  torrent  of  my  arms.  On  my  return,  Asshur-nadin-sum, 
my  eldest  son,  I  seated  upon  the  throne  of  his  kingdom  ;  all  the 
land  of  Shumir  and  Accad  I  made  subject  to  him." 

This  is  the  last  we  hear  of  Merodach-Baladan. 
The  time  and  manner  of  his  death  are  unknown. 
His  vital  energies  consumed  in  a  struggle  of  over 
thirty  years,  he  wandered  into  obscurity,  a  broken- 
hearted exile,  giving  up  the  cause  of  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  an  independent   Chaldean   empire  which  he 


6o.- 


EXNACHF.RIR,    KING   OF   ASSYRTA,    SEATEn   (iN    A\    FXAI.TRn   THRONE,    RECEIVES  THE   SPOILS   OF  THE   CITY   OF   I.AKHTSH." 


THE  SA  RGONIDES.  —SENNA  CHE  RIB. 


313 


had  made  his  mission  and  that  of  his  race.  Yet 
this  mission  was  to  be  carried  on,  but  by  other 
hands,  and  the  cause  was  to  triumph  even  yet,  but 
in  another  century :  for  with  the  disparition  of  the 
old  Chaldean  "  sea-king  "  ends  the  record  of  the 
year  700,  and  the  seventh  century  B.C.  begins. 
Assyria,  as  an  empire,  was  not  to  see  the   end  of  it. 

17.  The  new  century  was  not  ushered  in  by  any 
very  brilliant  achievement.  The  campaign  which 
opened  it — into  the  NiPUR  Mountains  (a  portion  of 
the  Nairi  range) — might  be  passed  over,  were  it 
not  that  the  account  given  of  it  on  the  great 
cylinder  is  an  admirable  piece  of  description  : 

"  In  my  fifth  campaign,  the  people  of  .  ..."  (a  string  of  names 
of  tribes),  "who,  like  the  nests  of  eaglis,  on  the  highest  summits  and 
wild  crags  of  the  Nipur  Mountains  had  fixed  their  dwellings,  refused 
to  bow  down  to  my  yoke.  At  the  foot  of  Mount  Nipur  I  pitched 
my  camp.  With  my  followers,  the  world-renowned,  and  with  my 
warriors,  the  inexorable,  I,  like  ihe  fleet  gazelle,  look  the  lead. 
Through  defiles,  over  rushing  torrents,  by  mountain  paths,  I  trav- 
elled in  my  litter  ;  but  in  places  which  for  my  litter  were  too  steep,  I 
climbed  on  my  feet,  and  like  a  mountain  goat  among  the  lofty  cliffs,  I 
clambered.  My  knees  were  my  place  of  rest ;  upon  the  rocks  I  sat 
me  down,  and  water  of  the  precipitous  mountain  side  to  assuage  my 
thirst  I  drank.  To  the  peaks  of  the  wooded  highlands  I  pursued 
them  and  completely  defeated  them.  Their  cities  I  captured ;  I 
carried  off  their  spoils  ;  I  ravaged,  I  destroyed,  I  burned  them  with 
fire." 

18.  It  was  probably  during  Sennacherib's  absence 
in  the  North  that  Suzub  ''the  Babylonian,"  as  he  is 
now  called,  emerged  from  his  retreat  and  succeeded 
in  re-assuming  the  royal  title  and  power.  But  the 
Assyrian,  before  swooping  down  on  him,  deter- 
mined to  pluck  out  the  new  nest  of  conspiracy  and 


3H 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


rebellion  which  the  emigrants  from  Bit-Yakin  had 
founded  on  the  shore  of  Elam,  and  conceived  the 
bold  and  original  design  of  attacking  it  from  the 
sea.  He  ordered  captive  shipwrights  "  of  the  land 
Khatti  "  (Phoenicians  of  the  sea-coast,  no  doubt),  to 
construct  in  Nineveh  ''tall  ships,  after  the  manner 
of  their  country,"  manned  them  with  mariners  from 
Tyre  and  Sidon,  and  let  them  sail  some  distance 
down  the  Tigris,  when  they  were  transferred  by 
land,  with  the  help  of  wooden  ....  (the  inscrip- 
tion here  is  unfortunately  mutilated  ;  probably 
sledges  and  rollers) — all  the  way  down  to  the 
great  Arakhtu  Canal,  one  of  Babylonia's  prin- 
cipal thoroughfares  and  fertilizers.  Then  the  sol- 
diers were  put  on  board  and  the  fleet  sailed  down 
the  Arakhtu  into  the  Euphrates,  where  it  was  joined 
by  some  more  ships,  built  at  a  city  on  the  upper 
Euphrates,  and  onwards  to  a  station  by  the  Gulf. 
The  king's  camp  was  pitched  so  near  the  coast  that 
the  waters,  at  high  tide,  encompassed  it  all  round 
and  swamped  the  tents,  so  that  the  king,  with  his 
attendants,  was  forced  to  remain  five  days  and 
nights  on  board  the  ships.  At  last,  the  fleet,  with 
all  the  troops  on  board,  wound  its  way  through  the 
marshes  and  emerged  into  the  Gulf  from  the  mouth 
of  the  Euphrates.  A  maritime  expedition  was  a 
great  novelty  to  the  Assyrians,  an  essentially  conti- 
nental people,  and  the  occasion  was  deemed  an 
unusually  momentous  one.  It  was  duly  honored 
with  much  solemnity  and  ceremony.  Sacrifices 
were  offered,  and  little  golden  models  of  ships  and 
fishes  made  of  gold  were  sunk  into  the    sea  as  a 


THE  SARGONIDES.— SENNACHERIB. 


315 


propitiatory  offering  to   Ea,   the  lord  of  the   deep. 
The  expedition  was  only  too  successful. 

"  The  men  of  Bit-Yakin,  and  their  gods,  and  the  men  of  Elam  " 
(several  districts  having  been  ravaged  and  their  cities  captured)  "  I 
carried  away  ;  not  one  of  the  evil  doers  I  left  behind.  In  ships  I 
embarked  them,  to  the  other  side  I  made  them  cross,  and  I  made 
them  take  the  road  to  Assyria.  .  .  .  On  my  return,  Suzub  the 
Babylonian,  who  to  the  sovereignty  of  Phumir  and  Akkad  had 
restored  himself,  in  a  great  battle  I  defeated  ;  I  captured  him  alive 
with  my  own  hand,  in  bonds  and  chains  of  iron  I  laid  him,  and  to 
Assyria  I  carried  him  away.  The  king  of  Elam,  who  had  supported 
him,  I  defeated;    I  laid  low  his  might  and  annihilated  his  hosts." 

19.  Victory  was  followed  up  by  invasion  ;  the 
smoke  of  burning  towns,  ""  as  driven  by  a  violent 
storm-wind,  obscured  the  wide  face  of  heaven,"  and 
Khudur-Nankhundi  had  already  betaken  himself  to 
the  highlands  for  safety,  abandoning  his  royal  city, 
when  Sennacherib,  for  the  second  time  in  his  ex- 
perience, was  compelled  to  retreat  before  a  power 
greater  than  that  of  human  arms.  In  his  ardor  to 
advance  he  had  been  unmindful  of  the  season  ;  it  was 
the  month  of  December,  never  a  favorable  one  for 
mountain  warfare.  But  this  particular  year  the  ele- 
ments were  even  more  boisterous  than  usual.  There 
was  an  earthquake,  and  "  the  heavens  pour'ed  down 
rains  upon  rains,  and  snow,  which  swelled  the  tor- 
rents." So  he  ''  turned  round  and  took  the  road  of 
Nineveh,"  as  he  admits  with  charming  simplicity. 

20.  In  those  same  days  it  came  to  pass  that 
Khudur-Nankhundi,  king  of  Elam,  died,  and  was 
succeeded  by  his  brother,  Umman-Minan, — '•'  a  man 
without  understanding  or  insight,"  he  is  called,  be- 
cause of  his  readiness  to  join  in  revolts  and  conspir- 


3i6 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


acles,  notwithstanding  the  many  severe  lessons  his 
predecessors  had  received.  True,  the  temptation 
was  great.  For  Sennacherib  dwelt  in  his  own  land 
unusually  long,  probably  absorbed  in  his  buildings 
and  restorations  ;  at  least,  so  it  would  appear  from 
the  long  interval — no  less  than  six  years — between 
his  seventh  campaign  and  his  eighth.  In  this  inter- 
val the  irrepressible  Suzub  turned  up  again  at  Baby- 
lon,   having    apparently    escaped    from    captivity, 


_-f5i«5:3S*V^**"'' 


Oi      -4 


4 


'a 


^^M-   '^ 


6l. — DETAIL  OF  CHALDEAN    MARSHES:    WILD   SOW  WITH  YOUNG. 
(palace   of   SENNACHERIB,    KOYUNJIK.) 

though  we  are  not  told  either  when  or  how  he  con- 
trived the  difficult  feat.  He  seems  at  first  to  have 
led  the  adventurous  life  of  an  outlaw,  as  he  is  said 
to  have  collected  about  him  a  band  of  desperadoes 
— "wicked,  bloodthirsty,  fugitive  rabble,"  with 
whom  he  hid  among  the  marshes,  then  passed  into 
Elam  to  collect  more  men,  and  rapidly  return- 
ing, entered  Babylon,  where  the  people  "  seated 
him  who  deserved  it  not  on  the  throne,  and  be- 
stowed on  him   the  crown   of   Shumir  and  Accad." 


THE  SARGON/DES.—SEJVATAC/IE/ilB. 


3^7 


He  at  once  cast  about  him  for  allies.  But  alliances 
were  not  to  be  had  for  nothing  and  the  royal  treas- 
ury was  exhausted.  So,  with  the  consent  of  the 
Babylonians,  he  opened  that  of  the  great  temples, 
brought  out  the  gold  and  silver  that  was  there 
found  and  offered  it  to  Umman-Minan,  proposing 
to  him  a  treaty  :  "  Collect  thy  army  !  Strike  thy 
camp!  Hasten  to  Babylon!  Stand  by  us!" 
*'  Then,"  writes  Sennacherib,  who,  from  the  tone  of 
this  entire  passage,  seems  thoroughly  disgusted  and 
out  of  patience, 

"  Then  he,  the  Elamite,  whose  cities  I  had  captured  and  made 
even  with  the  ground,  showed  that  he  had  no  sense  :  he  was  unmind- 
ful of  it.  He  assembled  his  army  ;  his  chariots  and  wagons  he 
collected  ;  horses  and  asses  he  harnessed  to  their  yokes.  ...  A  vast 
host  of  a'Mes  he  led  along  with  him  ....  and  the  road  to  Babylonia 
they  took.  .  .  .  The  Babylonians,  wicked  devils,  the  gates  of  their 
city  barred  strongly  and  hardened  their  hearts  for  resistance." 

The  forces  of  Elam  and  Babylon  joined  with- 
out hindrance  and  did  not  wait  for  the  Assyrian's 
attack,  but  boldly  advanced  to  meet  him.  Then 
was  fought  a  great  battle  the  description  of  which, 
fortunately  preserved  almost  uninjured  on  the  great 
cylinder,  is  altogether  the  finest  specimen  of  Assy- 
rian historical  literature  we  have.  Indeed,  so  full 
of  life  is  it,  of  movement  and  picturesque  detail, 
that  it  would  hold  its  own  even  if  compared  with 
the  best  battle-pieces  in  any  literature,  those  of 
Homer  himself  not  excepted.  It  were  sacrilege  to 
quote  or  abridge.     We  give  the  whole.* 

*  Translated  from  Hoerning's  version. 


3 1 8  THE  STOR  V  OF  ASS YRIA. 

21.  "  Even  as  swarms  of  IcJcust  pass  over  the  country,  they  has- 
tened onwards,  to  do  battle  with  me.     The  dust  of  their  feet  rose  be- 
fore me  as  when  a  mighty  storm-wind  covers  the  face 
Battle  of        °^  ^^^  wide  heaven  with  rain-laden  clouds.     By  the  city 

Khaliili,  of  Khaluli,  on  the  bank  of  the  Tigris,  they  drew  them- 

692  or  691         ,  .     ,    ,,,  ,        ,1    ,  \.    ■     r 

B_Q,  selves  up  m  battle  array  and   called   up  their  forces. 

But  I  prayed  to  Asshur,  Sin,  Shamash,  Bel.  Nebo  and 
Nergal,  to  Ishtar  of  Nineveh  and  Ishtar  of  Arbela,  my  heavenly 
helpers,  to  give  me  victory  over  the  mighty  foe.  In  good  time  they 
hearkened  to  my  prayers,  and  came  to  my  assistance.  Similar  to  the 
lion  in  fury,  I  donned  my  cuirass ;  with  the  helmet,  the  honor  of 
battle,  I  decked  my  head.  My  lofty  war  chariot,  that  sweeps  away 
the  foes,  in  the  wrath  of  my  heart  I  hastily  mounted.  The  mighty 
bow  I  seized  which  Asshur  has  given  into  my  hand,  my  mace,  the 
life-destroying,  I  grasped.  Against  all  the  hosts  of  the  rebels  I  broke 
loose,  impetuous  as  a  lion  ;  I  thundered  like  Raman.  By  command 
of  Asshur,  the  great  lord  my  lord,  from  end  to  end  of  the  field,  even 
as  the  rush  of  a  mighty  shower,  I  sped  against  the  foe.  With  the 
weapons  of  Asshur  my  lord  and  the  onslaught  of  my  terrible  battle, 
I  made  their  breasts  to  quake,  and  drove  them  to  bay.  I  lightened 
their  ranks  with  mace  and  with  arrows,  and  their  corpses  I  strewed 
around  like  sheaves  (?).  Khumbanundash,  the  king  of  Elam's  gen- 
eral and  principal  stay,  a  man  of  high  estate  and  prudent,  together 
with  his  attendant  lords, — golden  daggers  in  their  girdles,  armlets  of 
pure  gold  on  their  wrists, — I  led  away  like  sturdy  bulls  that  are  fet- 
tered, and  ended  their  lives :  I  cut  their  throats  as  one  does  to  lambs, 
and  their  dear  lives  I  beat  out  as  .  .  .  (?)  Like  a  violent  shower  I 
scattered  their  standards  and  tents  on  the  ground,  limp  and  in  tatters. 
The  asses*  that  were  yoked  to  my  chariot  swam  in  gore  ....  blood 
and  mud  stained  the  pole  of  my  war  chariot,  that  sweeps  away  ob- 
stacles and  hindrances.  With  the  bodies  of  their  warriors  I  filled 
the  valley  as  with  grass.  ...  As  trophies  of  victory  I  cut  off  their 
hands  and  stripped  from  their  wrists  the  armlets  of  shining  gold  and 
silver ;  with  maces  set  with  sharp  spikes  I  shattered  their  arms ;  the 
golden  and  silver  daggers  I  took  from  their  hips.  The  rest  of  his 
great  lords,  together  with  Nebosumiskun,  the  son  of  Merodach-Bal- 
adan,  who  were  afraid  of  my  arms  and  had  collected  their  forces,  I 
took  alive  in  the  midst  of  the  battle,  with  mv  own  hand.     The  char- 


*  Perhaps  "  mules  "  ?     The  German  says  "  Esel." 


THE  SARGONIDES.— SENNACHERIB.  319 

lots  I  brought  in  from  the  field ;  the  warriors  who  mounted  them  had 
fallen,  the  drivers  had  disappeared,  and  the  horses  were  running 
about  by  themselves.  For  the  distance  of  two  kasbus  I  commanded 
to  cut  them  down.  Him,  Ummanminan,  the  king  of  Elam,  together 
with  the  king  of  Babylon  and  his  allies  from  the  land  of  Kaldu,  the 
fierceness  of  my  battle  overthrew  them.  They  abandoned  their 
tents,  and,  to  save  their  lives,  they  trampled  on  the  corpses  of 
their  own  warriors ;  they  sped  away,  even  as  young  swallows  scared 
from  their  nests.  ...  I  drove  my  chariots  and  horses  in  pursuit  of 
them ;  their  fugitives,  who  ran  for  their  lives,  were  speared  wher. 
ever  they  were  found." 

There  is  in  Egyptian  wall-literature  a  parallel 
battle-piece  to  this,  but  much  older :  it  is  a  poem 
describing  the  battle  of  Kadesh  (see  p.  30)  and  the 
prowess  of  King  Ramses  II.,  written  by  his  court 
poet,  the  priestly  scribe,  Pentaour.  The  descrip- 
tion is  as  fine  and  animated  but  more  florid,  and 
contains  even  more  minute  particulars  ;  for  instance, 
the  names  of  the  king's  war-horses.  The  poem 
was  held  in  great  honor  and  copies  of  it  were  found 
on  several  temple-walls. 

22.  The  end  of  this  brilliant  campaign  is  recorded 
not  on  the  Taylor-Cylinder,  but  on  a  monument 
hewn  in  the  live  rock  near  a  place  called  Bavian, 
and  situated  in  a  wild  and  very  beautiful  moun- 
tain nook,  in  a  hilly  range  somewhat  to  the  north- 
east of  Khorsabad.  This  monument,  surrounded 
by  several  other  more  or  less  injured  rock-sculp- 
tures, is  therefore  later  than  the  Cylinder.  The 
campaign  which  culminated  in  the  battle  of  Kha- 
luli  is  briefly  sketched,  with  the  closing  remark  that 
the  Elamites  were  so  thoroughly  cowed  and  broken 
by  their  defeat  that  they  retired  into  their  moun- 


320  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

tains   ''  like  eagles,"  aiid  for  a  long  time   undertook 
no  more  expeditions,  and  fought  no  more  battles. 

23.  But  Babylon  was  not  to  be  let  off  so  cheaply. 
After  ravaging  the  more  accessible  parts  of  Elam, 
Sennacherib  returned  with  the  set  purpose  of  stamp- 
ing out,  once  for  all,  that  standing  hearth  of  rebell- 
ion, and  scattering  its  cinders  and  ashes  to  the  winds. 
''  In  my  second  expedition  to  Babylon,  which  I 
went  forth  to  capture,  I  saw  the  destruction  of  its 
power."  He  was  actuated  no  doubt  by  the  convic- 
tion that  Assyria,  in  her  Southern  neighbor,  had  to 
deal,  not  with  an  ordinary  rebel,  but  v/ith  a  formid- 
able political  rival,  who,  now  at  last  thoroughly 
aroused  by  the  long  machinations  of  the  native 
princes  and  their  heroic  struggles,  would  not  stand 
on  self-defence,  nor  be  content  with  asserting  in- 
dependence, but  would  aspire  to  restore  the  old 
Empire,  with  all  its  glories,  and  to  resume  towards 
her  former  colony  and  vassal  the  attitude  of  metrop- 
olis and  sovereign. 

24.  It  is  this  political  foresight  which  explains  the 
terrible  vengeance  he  wreaked  on  the  great  Southern 
capital — a  v^engeance  so  sweeping  and  ruthless  as  to 
appear  monstrous  from  even  an  Assyrian's  stand- 
point, especially  as  it  was  carried  out  in  cold  blood, 
after  the  excitement  of  the  battle  was  passed,  and 
an  interval  of  weeks,  perhaps  months  had  elapsed. 
He  proceeded  most  methodically.  He  gave  the 
city  to  his  army  to  sack  and  carried  away  the  tro- 
phies formerly  taken  from  Assyrian  kings — the  sig- 
net-ring of  Tukulti-Nineb  (see  p.  38),  the  statues  of 
the  god  Raman  and  his  consort,  Shala,  lost  by  Tig- 


THE  SARGONIDES.—SENNACIIERTB.  321 

lath-Pileser  I.  (see  p.  62) — then  gave  the  word  to 
shatter  and  destroy.  "  The  city  and  houses,  from 
their  foundation  to  their  upper  chambers,  I  de- 
stroyed, dug  up,  in  the  fire  I  burnt.  The  fortress 
and  outer  wall,  the  temples  of  the  gods,"  the  zig- 
eurat,  were  overturned  and  the  materials  and  rub- 
bish  thrown  into  the  Arakhtu  Canal  (see  p.  314).  He 
even  ordered  the  temples  to  be  plundered  before 
they  were  demolished,  and  the  statues  of  the  gods 
to  be  broken  to  pieces,  and  had  canals  dug  through 
the  city:  "  In  order  that,  in  the  course  of  time, 
no  one  may  find  the  place  of  this  city  and  of  its 
temples,  I  covered  it  with  water."''^  Such  unex- 
ampled severity  was  nothing  short  of  sacrilege  when 
dealt  out  to  the  ancient  and  holy  city,  venerable 
alike  to  both  nations,  and  which  we  have  seen  Sen- 
nacherib's predecessors  treat  with  such  unvarying 
respect  and  piety.  Nor  did  it  avail  in  the  end. 
When  events  are  ripe  and  their  fulness  of  time 
is  drawing  nigh,  it  lies  not  in  any  man's  power,  by 
either  craft  or  violence,  to  stay  them. 

25.  There  is  not  much  more  to  say  of  Sennach- 
erib's political  and  military  career.  During  the 
last  ten  years  of  his  life,  he  appears  to  have,  with 
few  exceptions,  ''dwelt  in  Nineveh."  There  were 
some  more  wars,  but  of  these  we  have  but  fragmen- 
tary records,  on  some  indeed  no  authority  but  Greek 
traditions.  One  thing  seems  sure,  that  he  never 
again  tempted  fortune  in  the  "  land  of  Khatti." 
A  fragment  of  an  inscription   tells  of  a   war  against 


*  From  tlie  Frencli  version  of  Pognon. 
21 


^22  ^-^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

some  Arabian  queen.  Several  passages  from  the 
earlier  inscriptions  mention  his  having  repeatedly 
repressed  the  people  of  Cilicia,  cut  timber  in  their 
mountains,  the  Amanos,  and  made  gangs  of  Cilician 
captives  work  at  his  constructions,  together  with 
Chaldeans,  Aramaeans  and  others.  There  is  therefore 
nothing  improbable  in  a  tradition,  reported  by  late 
Greek  writers,  that  a  Greek  army  had  once  landed  in 
Cilicia  and  been  repulsed  by  Sennacherib,  who  is 
then  said  to  have  founded  the  city  of  Tarsos,  on 
the  small  but  rapid  river  Kydnos. 

26.  Sennacherib's  end  was  the  most  horrible  that 
can  be  imagined  :  he  was  murdered,  while  praying 
in  a  temple,  by  two  of  his  sons,  who  immediately 
fled  to  Urartu,*  where  they  were  sure  not  only  of  a 
friendly  reception,  but  of  finding  followers  enough 
to  make  a  stand  and  a  venture  for  the  crown.  Their 
eldest  brother,  who  had  at  one  time  been  made 
viceroy  of  Babylon  (see  p.  312),  must  have  died  since, 
for  it  was  a  fourth  brother  who  ascended  the  throne 
and  went  forth  to  punish  them  :  Sennacherib's  fa- 
vorite son,  ESARHADDON,  the  same  for  whom  he 
left  certain  personal  property  in  the  keeping  of  the 
priests  of  Nebo,   by  a   document   which   has  been 

called  his ''Will."t 

27.  If  it  really  were  horror  of  his  father's  fate 
that  deterred  Sennacherib  from  occupying  the  new 
city  and  palace  of  Dur-Sharrukin,  the  change  of 
residence  availed  him   little.     But   it   was  of  great 


*  See  Second  Kings,  xix.  37  ;  Second  Chronicles,  xxxii.  21 ;  Isaiah, 
xxxvii.  38.     These  passages  are  confirmed  from  other  sources, 
t  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  109. 


62. — CAPTIVES   BUILDING    PLATFORM-MOUND- 


323 


324 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA, 


benefit  to  his  royal  city  of  Nineveh  which,  under 
his  supervision  and  lavish  expenditure,  blossomed 
into  new  beauty  and  greater  splendor  than  ever  be- 
fore. For  he  did  not  content  himself  with  pulling 
down  or  restoring  old  palaces  and  building  new 
ones,  but  undertook  the  renovation  of  the  entire 
city,  its  walls  and  fortifications,  and  exerted  himself 
wisely  for  the  welfare  of  the  country  around  it. 
And  this  he  did  after  such  an  approved  modern 
manner,  that  the  description  almost  bewilders  us. 
When,  for  instance,  we  read  a  passage  like  this  : 
"  Of  Nineveh,  my  royal  city,  I  greatly  enlarged  the 
dwellings.  Its  streets,  I  renovated  the  old  ones 
and  I  widened  those  which  were  too  narrow.  I 
made  it  as  brilliant  as  the  sun,"* — can  we  not  al- 
most substitute  "  Paris  "  for  Nineveh  and  Napoleon 
III.  for  the  Assyrian  king?  And  what  more  could 
a  modern  ''improver"  do  than  turn  rivers  from 
their  course  for  purposes  of  public  utility?  The 
city  suffered  from  want  of  water.  "  Murmurings 
ascended  on  high"  from  the  people;  "drinking 
water  they  knew  not,  and  to  the  rains  from  the 
vault  of  heaven  their  eyes  were  directed."  Of  the 
"kings  his  fathers  who  went  before  him,"  he  re- 
proachfully tells  us  that,  "  as  to  caring  for  the 
health  of  the  city,  by  bringing  streams  of  water 
into  it  .  .  .  none  turned  his  thought  to  it,  nor 
brought  his  heart  to  it.  Then  I,  Sennacherib,  king 
of  Assyria,  by  command  of  the  gods,  resolved  in  my 
mind  to  complete   this   work,    and    I    brought    my 

*  From  the  "  Bellino  Cylinder  ";  translation  of  Mr.  H.  Y.  Talbot, 
in  "  Records  of  the  Past." 


326 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


mind  to  it."  So  he  had  no  less  than  sixteen  canals 
dug  and  embanked,  and  turned  the  neighboring 
stream,  Khuzur,  to  fill  them.  This  is  the  little 
river — little,  but  turbulent  in  the  rain-season — still 
called  the  Khosr  or  KhauSER,  which  even  now 
flows  between  the  mounds  of  Koyunjik  and  Nebbi 
Yunus,  the  northern  and  southern  quarters  of  an- 
cient Nineveh.  The  Tigris,  on  the  other  hand, 
which  had  encroached  and  was  undermining  the 
platform  on  which  former  kings  had  built  palaces 
now  ruined,  had  to  be  forced  back  into  its  old  bed 
and  regulated  by  means  of  a  new  channel,  before 
the  construction  of  Sennacherib's  own  residence 
could  be  proceeded  with. 

28.  This  residence  has  earned  the  distinction  of 
being  the  most  imposing  of  Assyrian  palaces.  In 
the  words  of  Mr.  George  Rawlinson,  it  "  surpassed 
in  size  and  splendor  all  earlier  edifices,  and  was 
never  excelled  in  any  respect,  except  by  one  of  later 
building.  The  palace  of  Asshurbanipal,  built  on 
the  same  platform  by  the  grandson  of  Sennacherib, 
was,  it  must  be  allowed,  more  exquisite  in  its  orna- 
mentation ;  but  even  this  edifice  did  not  equal 
the  great  work  of  Sennacherib  in  the  number  of  its 
apartments,  or  the  grandeur  of  its  dimensions."  It 
covered  an  area  of  eight  acres,  and  is  thought  to 
contain  no  less  than  seventy  or  eighty  rooms.  Of 
these  the  principal  ones — the  state  apartments — 
were,  as  usual,  lined  with  sculptured  slabs,  repre- 
senting the  most  varied  scenes  of  the  monarch's  life 
in  war  and  peace,  abroad  and  at  home.  We  can- 
not do  better  than   accompany  the  few  illustrations 


64.— HALF -SCULPTURED  WINGED  BULL  DRAGGED  ALONG  ON  A 
SLEDGE  ON  GREASED  WOODEN  ROLLS.  OVERSEERS  DRIVING 
CAPTIVES   TO   WORK. 


327 


328 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


which  Hmited  space  enables  us  to  present  here, 
with  a  couple  of  descriptive  pages  from  Mr.  G. 
Rawlinson's  always  spirited  and  entertaining  book  : 

29.  The  most  striking  characteristic  of  Sennacherib's  ornamenta- 
tion is  its  strong  and  marked  realism.  .  .  .  Mountains,  rocks,  trees, 
roads,  rivers,  lakes,  were  regularly  portrayed,  an  attempt  being  made 
to  represent  the  locality,  whatever  it  might  be,  as  truthfully  as  the 
artist's  skill  and  the  character  of  his  material  rendered  possible.  .  .  . 
The  species  of  trees  is  distinguished  ....  gardens,  fields,  ponds, 
reeds,  are  carefully  represented;  wild  animals  are  introduced,  as 
stags,  boars  and  antelopes  ;  birds  fly  from  tree  to  tree,  or  stand  over 
their  nests,  feeding  the  young  who  stretch  up  to  them  ;  fish  disport 
themselves  in  the  waters ;  fishermen  ply  their  craft;  boatmen  and 
agricultural  laborers  pursue  their  avocations ;  the  scene  is,  as  it 
were,  photographed,  with  all  its  features.* 

In  the  same  spirit  of  realism  Sennacherib  chooses  for  artistic  rep- 
resentation scenes  of  a  commonplace  and  everyday  character.  The 
trains  of  attendants  who  daily  enter  his  palace  with  game  and 
locust  for  his  dinner,  and  cakes  and  fruit  for  his  dessert,  appear  on 
the  walls  of  the  passages,  exactly  as  they  walked  through  his  courts 
bearing  the  delicacies  in  which  he  delighted.  Elsewhere  he  puts 
before  us  the  entire  process  of  carving  and  transporting  a  colossal 
bull,  from  the  first  removal  of  the  huge  stone  in  its  rough  state  from 
the  quarry  to  its  final  elevation  on  a  palace  mound,  as  part  of  the 
great  gate\vay  of  a  royal  residence.  We  see  the  trackers  dragging 
the  rough  block,  supported  on  a  low  flat-bottomed  boat,  along  the 
course  of  a  river,  disposed  in  gangs  ....  each  gang  having  a  cos- 
tume of  its  own  which  probably  marked  its  nation  ....  under  task- 
masters armed  with  staves,  who  urge  on  the   labor  with  blows.   .   .  . 

*  Perhaps  this  was  the  artists'  way  of  asserting  their  individuality 
and  extracting  a  little  amusement  out  of  a  task  which,  after  all,  must 
have  been  terribly  monotonous  and  cramping  to  the  imagination, 
from  the  conventional  sameness  in  the  treatment  of  the  innumerable 
figures.  How  else  explain  such  freaks  and  by-plays  as,  for  instance, 
in  a  river  carrying  corpses  of  men  and  horses,  or  heavily  loaded 
boats, — a  large  fish  swallowing  a  little  one,  of  which  only  the  tail  is 
visible,  protruding  from  the  big  one's  mouth  j  or  a  crab  encircling  a 
fish  in  its  deadly  embrace } 


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330 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


The  whole  scene  must  be  represented,  and  so  the  trackers  are  all 
there,  to  the  number  of  three  hundred  ....  each  delineated  with  as 
much  care  as  if  he  were  not  the  exact  image  of  ninety-nine  others. 
We  then  observe  the  block  transferred  to  land,  and  carved  into  the 
rough  semblance  of  a  bull,  in  v/hichform  it  is  placed  on  a  rude  sledge 
and  conveyed  along  level  land  by  gangs  of  laborers,  arranged  nearly 
as  before,  to  the  foot  of  the  mound  at  whose  top  it  has  to  be  placed. 
The  construction  of  the  mound  is  elaborately  represented.  Brick- 
makers  are  seen  moulding  the  bricks  at  its  base,  while  workmen 
with  baskets  at  their  backs,  full  of  earth,  brick,  stone  or  rubbish 
toil  up  the  ascent — ^for  the  mound  is  already  half  raised: — and  empty 
their  burdens  out  upon  the  summit.  (See  Fig.  63.)  The  bull, 
still  lying  on  its  sledge,  is  then  drawn  up  an  inclined  plane  to  the  top 
by  four  gangs  of  laborers,  in  the  presence  of  the  monarch  and  his 
attendants.  After  this  the  carving  is  completed,  and  the  colossus, 
having  been  raised  into  an  upright  position,  is  conveyed  along  the 
surface  of  the  platform  to  the   exact  site  which  it  is  to  occupy.* 

It  is  worth  noting  that  when  Layard  removed  the 
bulls  for  shipment  on  the  Tigris,  they  had  to  be 
transported  to  the  river  bank  in  very  much  the  same 
manner  we  see  represented  on  the  sculptures,  gangs 
of  Arabs  on  voluntary  service  being  substituted  for 
the  gangs  of  captive  laborers. 

*  "  The  Five  Great  Monarchies,"  [864,  Vol.  II.,  p.  460  and  ff. 


X. 

THE     SARGONIDES:      ESARHADDON     (ASSHUR-AKHI- 

IDDIN). 

1.  For  some  reason  or  other  the  reign  of  this  king 
has  not  yielded  as  abundant  a  flow  of  materials  as 
those    of     his    father    and     Grandfather. 

There  is  only  one  long,  continuous  in-  681-668 
scription  of  him,  in  two  copies,  slightly 
differing  from  each  other,  and  considerably  injured, 
both  stopping  short  of  his  most  important  achieve- 
ment, the  conquest  of  Egypt.  One  reason  for  a 
scarcity  of  documents,  unusual  for  so  late  a  period, 
may  be  that,  of  the  three  palaces  which  he  built, 
that  at  Babylon  has  not  been  discovered  yet,  that 
at  Kalah  was  never  quite  finished,  and  was  destroyed 
by  a  great  fire  which  ruined  or  destroyed  the  sculp- 
tures, while  that  at  Nineveh  is  entombed  in  Jonah's 
Mound  (Nebbi-Yunus),  and  could  never  properly  be 
explored  on  account  of  the  sacredness  of  the  place, 
and  the  objections  of  the  Mussulman  authorities  to 
having  it  disturbed."^ 

2.  It  is  particularly  unlucky  that  half  the  first  col- 
umn of  one  of  these  inscriptions  should  have  proved 
hopelessly  defaced,   for  it   is  probable  that  it   con- 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  1 1. 
33 1 


332 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


tained  an  account  of  'the  murder  of  Sennacherib. 
It  is  evident,  where  the  lines  become  legible,  that 
Esarhaddon  is  preparing  to  avenge  his  father :  ''  I 
was  wrathful  as  a  lion  and  my  soul  raged  within  me  " 
— and  he  *'  lifted   up  his  hand  to  "  the  great  gods, 


66. — ROCK-STELE   OF   ESARHADDON    AT   NAHR-EL-KELB 

vowing  to  "  assume  the  sovereignty  of  his  fsc'lier's 
house."  It  appears  that  he  was  not  at  Nineveh  at 
the  time,  but  somewhere  in  the  western  part  of 
Nairi.  It  was  the  month  of  January ;  snow-storms 
were  raging,  and  endangering  his  army  in  those  wild 
passes ;  but  he  did  not  recede,  nor  even  tarry  to  pre- 
pare for  a  winter  campaign.     He  had  "lifted  up  his 


THE  SAKGONIDES:  ESARHADDON. 


m 


hands  "  to  the  great  gods  with  more  than  usual  fervor 
and  solemnity,  and  had  received  a  token.  *''They 
accepted  my  prayer.  In  their  gracious  favor  a  mes- 
sage they  sent  to  me  :  Go  !  fear  not  !  We  march  at 
thy  side  I  We  shall  overthrow  thine  enemies." 
And  from  the  temple  of  his  favorite  goddess,  Ishtar 
of  Arbela,  had  come  special  messages  of  like  purport. 
These  are  the  so-called  "  addresses,"  which  were  re- 
corded on  tablets,  with  the  names  of  the  priests  or 
priestesses  whose  lips  delivered  them.  One  such  tab- 
let has  been  preserved,  and  the  text  is  in  suf^ciently 
good  condition  to  give  a  very  favorable  idea  of  this 
specimen  of  religious  poetry,  some  passages  of  which 
are  truly  impressive.  "  I  am  Ishtar  of  Arbela,"  the 
goddess  is  made  to  say.  "  By  thy  side  I  go,  fear 
not.  .  .  .  Thine  enemy,  like  the  harvest  gathering 
of  the  month  Sivan  (May-June),  before  thy  feet 
descends  to  do  battle.  The  Great  Lady  am  I. 
.  .  .  Thine  enemy  I  cut  off  and  I  give  to  thee.  .  .  . 
Fear  not,  O  Esarhaddon  ....  I  will  ease  thy 
heart.  .  .  .  Respect  as  for  thy  mother  thou  hast 
caused  to  be  shown  to  me.  Each  of  '  he  sixty  great 
gods,  my  strong  ones,  with  his  life  will  guide  thee, 
Sin  on  thy  right  hand,  Shamash  on  thy  left.  .  .  . 
Upon  mankind  trust  not ;  bend  thine  eyes  upon  me  ; 
trust  to  me  :   I  am  Ishtar  of  Arbela."  * 

3.  There  was  a  meeting  far  away  in  the  highlands 
of  the  Upper  Euphrates  (a  part  of  Cappadocia),  and 
a  shower  of  arrows  began   the   battle.     Whether  it 


*  Translation  of  Mr.  Th.  G.   Pinches,  in    ''Records   of  the   Past," 
Vol.  XI. 


334 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


was  carried  on  and  ended  in  Esarhaddon's  victory 
or  whether  the  fugitive  prince's  army  refused  to  fight 
against  superior  numbers,  is  not  very  clear.  *'  The 
fear  of  the  great  gods  my  lords  overwhelmed  them." 
"  Ishtar,  lady  of  war  and  battle,  stood  by  my  side. 
Their  bows  she  shattered,  their  line  of  battle,  so 
closely  ordered,  she  broke  through,  and  in  their  army 
the  cry  resounded,  '  This  one  is  our  king  ! '  "  At  all 
events,  Esarhaddon  remained  undisputed  master  of 
the  field,  and  of  the  throne.  There  is  nothing  to 
show  whether  his  iniquitous  brothers  perished. 
Centuries  later  there  was  a  tradition  in  Armenia  to 
the  effect  that  their  descendants  had  long  been  in 
possession  of  lands  in  that  country. 

4-  The  reign  of  Esarhaddon  can  certainly  not  be 
called  either  inglorious  or  uneventful.  But  there  is 
a  sameness  about  the  exploits  of  Assyrian  kings 
and  the  places  where  they  are  performed  which 
makes  the  recital  of  them  tedious  after  awhile. 
Still,  there  is  always  a  dramatic  element  in  the  war- 
fare with  Chaldea,  and  the  irrepressible  Bit-Yakin 
family.  It  was  a  son  of  Merodach-Baladan  who 
took  the  lead  this  time.  Taking  advantage  of  the 
disturbances  which  followed  Sennacherib's  sudden 
end,  he  had  surprised  the  Assyrian  governor  of  Ur 
and  seized  on  the  city.  And  when  the  new  king 
was  firmly  seated  on  his  father's  throne,  the  Chal- 
dean maintained  an  unequivocally  hostile  attitude  : 
*'  He  did  not  reverence  to  me,  the  gifts  of  a  brother 
he  presented  not,  to  do  homage  he  approached  not, 
his  ambassador  to  my  presence  he  sent  not,  and 
concerning  the  peace  of  my  kingdom  he  asked  not." 


THE  SARGONIDES:  ESARHADDON.  335 

All  these  were  grievous  breaches  of  international 
etiquette,  and,  from  a  vassal,  meant  rank  rebellion. 
'*  His  evil  deeds  within  Nineveh,  my  capital,  I 
heard,"  continues  the  king,  "and  my  heart  groaned 
and  my  liver  was  stricken  down.  My  ofificers,  the 
prefects  of  the  borders  of  his  country,  I  sent  in  haste 
against  him  ;  he,  the  rebel,  heard  of  the  march  of 
my  army  and  to  Elam,  like  a  fox,  he  fled  away."  It 
is  obscurely  hinted  that  he  found  there  a  violent 
end,  that  the  gods  whose  covenant  he  had  broken 
laid  affliction  upon  him  ;  that  ''  he  trusted  to  Elam, 
but  did  not  thereby  save  his  life."  His  brother, 
Nahid-Marduk,  in  order  not  to  share  his  fate, 
hastened  to  Nineveh  to  tender  his  submission,  and 
was  invested  with  the  sovereignty  of  *'  the  province 
of  the  sea-coast,  the  whole  of  it,  the  inheritance  of 
his  brother,"  against  yearly  tribute,  which  he  made 
it  a  practice  to  bring  to  Nineveh  himself,  with  the 
addition  of  valuable  presents. 

5.  Esarhaddon  then  entered  on  a  line  of  policy 
the  exact  opposite  of  that  pursued  by  his  father. 
The  sacrilegious  vengeance  taken  by  the  latter  on 
the  holy  city  weighed  heavily  on  his  spirit,  and  he 
devoted  himself  to  the  task  of  healing  and  restora- 
tion. He  began  by  conciliating  the  people  of  Bab- 
ylon and  Borsip,  and  with  that  view  gave  them  back- 
certain  lands  that  had  been  taken  from  them.  Then 
he  went  to  work  to  rebuild  Babylon  itself  and  all 
its  desecrated  temples.  In  his  account  of  this  great 
undertaking,  in  which  he  calls  himself  a  ''  worshipper 
of  Nebo  and  Marduk,"  and  refrains  from  calling  on 
any  of  the  more  distinctively  Assyrian  gods,  he  shows 


336  THE  STOR  V  OF  ASSYRIA. 

great  delicacy  of   feeling  in   the   way  in   which    he 
avoids  casting  a  reflection   on  his  father's  memory. 
The  catastrophe  which  had   overtaken   Babylon   he 
attributes  to  a' special  judgment  of  the  god  Marduk, 
but    even    that    is   vaguely   and   obscurely  worded. 
''  One  before  him,"  he  says  (alluding  to  Suzub,  see 
p.  317),  "  under  the  reign  of  a  former  king  "(Sennach- 
erib is  meant,  but  not  named),  ''  had   laid  hands  on 
the  great  temple  of  Marduk,  in  Babylon,  and  given 
away  all    his   treasures   as   the  price  of   a   bargain. 
This  angered  the  lord  of  the  gods,  Marduk  ;  he  forth- 
with determined  to  visit  the  land  with  chastisement, 
and  destroy  its  inhabitants."     All  that  followed  is 
then  described  as  the  direct  act  of  the  god  :  it  is  he 
who  flooded  the  city  with  the  waters  of  the  Arakhtu, 
who  made  it  even  with  the  ground,  who  demolished 
its  temples  so  that  the  gods  and  goddesses  flew  up 
into   heaven — and  so  Sennacherib,  it  is  implied  (for 
his  name   is  not  once  mentioned),  is  cleared  of  all 
blame,  having  been  but  the  instrument  of  a  divine 
judgment.      In  the   same  manner   Esarhaddon    an- 
nounces himself  as  the  chosen  instrument  of  the  god, 
who  "  selects  him  from  the  midst  of  his  brothers  "  to 
restore  the  city  and  its  sanctuaries.     His  affection  for 
the  great  capital  which  he  had,  so  to  speak,  raised 
from  the  dead,  was  very  great,  and   he  made  it  his 
favorite  residence.     He  never,  to  the  end  of  his  life, 
had  to  contend  with  rebellion  in  this  quarter. 

6.  We  may  pass  over  those  among  Esarhaddon's 
nine  recorded  campaigns  which  had  no  further  ob- 
ject than  securing  the  frontiers  from  inroads  and  re- 
bellions, and  which  were    most   probably  not  com- 


THE  SARGONIDES:  ESARIIADDON.  337 

mandcd  by  himself.  An  exception  must  be  made 
in  favor  of  an  expedition  into  "distant  Media," 
w  here  he  affirms  having  penetrated  further  than  any 
of  the  kings  before  him,  even  to  Bikni,  ""  where  the 
mountains  of  alabaster  are,"  and  where  he  captured 
several  refractory  *'  chiefs  of  cities,"  forgave  and  re- 
instated some  others,  while  three  more,  chiefs  of 
"  cities  of  Media  whose  position  is  remote,"  brought 
him  to  Nineveh  an  offering  of  choicest  horses.  An- 
other incident  of  a  frontier  war  which  should  not 
pass  unnoticed  is  the  repulse  and  defeat  of  '*  TlUSH- 
PA  THE  GiMIRRAI,  a  roving  warrior  whose  own  coun- 
try was  remote."  He  and  his  army  were  ''  destroyed 
by  the  sword  "  in  a  region  which  has  not  been  iden- 
tified, but  undoubtedly  lay  north  of  Cilicia,  in  the 
Nairi  highlands,  in  the  later  province  of  Cappadocia. 
"  Gimirrai "  is  the  Assyrian  name  of  the  nomadic 
people  usually  called  CIMMERIANS,  who,  like  the 
Medes,  belonged  to  a  different  race  from  any  of  the 
nations  we  have  hitherto  encountered.  As  this  is 
the  race  to  which  we  ourselves  belong,  and  as,  at  the 
epoch  of  history  we  are  now  reaching,  it  is  rapidly 
coming  to  the  front,  it  will  soon  be  necessary  to  in- 
terrupt the  narrative  and  devote  a  chapter  to  its 
migrations  and  progress. 

7.  With  Elam,  Esarhaddon's  relations  appear  to 
have  been  peaceable  throughout.  Not  so  with 
Arabia.  He  gives  a  very  remarkable  account  of  an 
expedition  into  an  Arabian  region — Bazu,  of  which 
the  name  has  not  yet  been  identified,  but  which 
must  have  lain  beyond  a  wide  belt  of  desert.  Some 
22 


338 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


scholars  think  it  was  Yemen.  He  describes  the  way 
as  lying  through  an  arid  waste,  ''a  land  of  thirst," 
full  of  loose  stones,  where  snakes  and  scorpions 
covered  the  ground  like  grasshoppers  ;  then  through 
high,  barren  mountains — a  description  which  forcibh' 
recalls  ''  the  great  and  terrible  wilderness"  of  Deu- 
teronomy, viii.  15,  '*  wherein  were  fiery  serpents  and 
scorpions,  and  thirsty  ground  where  was  no  water." 
There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  Esarhaddon's  state- 
ment, that  no  king  had  entered  this  region  before 
him.  Eight  Arabian  sovereigns  were  slain  in  this 
campaign,  two  of  them  women,  their  wealth  and 
their  gods  carried  away.  One  of  the  surviving 
chieftains,  Lailie,  who  had  at  first  fled  before  the 
invaders,  having  heard  of  the  capture  of  "  his  gods," 
performed  the  extraordinary  feat  of  following  the 
Assyrian  king  all  the  way  to  Nineveh,  to  try  and 
recover  them,  as  the  price  of  his  submission.  Esar- 
haddon,  whose  disposition  inclined  to  leniency, 
"showed  him  compassion  and  spoke  to  him  of 
brotherhood."  He  restored  to  him  ''his  gods 
which  had  been  carried  off,"  having  previously, 
however,  ordered  an  inscription  to  be  engraved  on 
them,  recording  their  capture  and  "  the  might  of 
Asshur  his  lord."  Not  content  with  this  favor,  the 
king  invested  him  with  the  sovereignty  of  the  entire 
province  of  Bazu,  which  he  had  just  conquered,  de- 
manding from  him  of  course  allegiance  and  tribute. 
This  was  not  the  only  case  of  captive  *'  gods  "  being 
restored  to  their  owners.  On  another  occasion  of 
the  same  kind,  the  king  mentions  having  caused 
"  their  injuries  to  be  repaired,"  before  engraving  on 


THE  SARGONIDES:  ESARHADDON.  o^g 

them  his  own  name  and  ''  the  might  of  Asshur  his 
lord." 

8.  For  over  twenty  years  the  West  had  not  been 
visited  by  Assyrian  armies,  not  since  Sennacherib's 
disastrous  retreat.  As  the  royal  inscriptions  never 
mention  any  country  unless  it  is  the  scene  of  an 
Assyrian  expedition,  we  do  not  know  what  was  go- 
ing on  during  this  long  interval  of  peace  in  the 
lands  of  Khatti  and  the  sea-coast.  They  were  prob- 
ably gathering  strength  for  a  new  rising.  It  broke 
out  in  Phoenician  Sidon,  which  appears  to  have 
got  rid  of  the  king  set  over  it  by  Sennacherib, 
and  to  have  begun  operations  in  advance  of  all  its 
neighbors,  supported  only  by  some  mountain  tribes 
of  Lebanon.  If  others  were  going  to  join  the  insur- 
rection, they  had  no  time  to  do  so,  for  Esarhaddon 
was  beforehand  with  them.  He  invested  the  offend- 
ing city  before  any  help  could  reach  it,  ''  rooted  up 
its  citadel  and  dwellings  and  flung  them  into  the 
sea,"  then  built  a  new  city,  which  he  named  "city 
of  Esarhaddon."  The  rebel  king,  who  had  fled  to 
some  island, — name  not  given — he  "  caught  like  a 
fish  from  out  of  the  sea  and  cut  off  his  head  ;  " 
the  same  treatment  was  inflicted  on  the  Lebanon 
chieftain,  who  was  taken  "  from  out  of  the  moun- 
tains, like  a  bird,"  and  both  heads  were  sent  to  Nin- 
eveh with  the  prisoners  and  spoil. 

9.  After  returning  to  Assyria,  Esarhaddon  con- 
voked the  ''kings  of  Khatti  and  of  the  nations  be- 
yond the  sea."  They  came  to  Nineveh,  twenty-two 
in  number,  ten  from  the  island  of  Cyprus  and  twelve 
from  the  principal  Syrian   states — the  latter  proba- 


340 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


bly  glad  at  heart  that  they  had  had  no  opportunity 
of  committing  themselves.  The  list  is  headed  by 
Baal,  king  of  Tyre,  and  Manasseh,  king  of  Judah  (the 
son  of  Hezekiah).  Then  come  the  kings  of  Edom, 
of  Moab,  of  Gaza,  of  Ascalon,  of  Gebal,  of  Arvad, 
of  Ammon,  of  Ashdod,  and  two  more  (unidentified) : 
"altogether  twenty-two  kings  of  Khatti  and  the 
sea-coast,  and  the  islands,  and  I  passed  them  in  re- 
view before  me."  They  had  not,  of  course,  come 
empty-handed.  Esarhaddon  was  then  building,  and 
their  gifts — whether  voluntary  or  demanded  from 
them — were  appropriate  to  the  occasion.  They 
consisted  of  ''  great  beams  and  rafters  of  ebony,  cedar 
and  cypress,"  from  Lebanon  and  other  mountains, 
slabs  of  alabaster  and  other  stones,  which  ''  from 
the  mountain  quarries,  the  place  of  their  origin, 
for  the  adornment  of  the  palace,  with  labor  and 
difficulty  unto  Nineveh  they  brought  along  with 
them." 

10.  The  palace  thus  endowed  is  that  which  the 
mound  of  Nebbi  Yunus  still  encloses,  unexplored. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  it  may  some  day  be  laid 
open,  for  its  furnishings  and  appointments  must 
have  been  of  the  most  costly  magnificence,  judging 
from  the  detailed  description  given  on  one  of  Esar- 
haddon's  cylinders.  The  feast  of  inauguration, 
too,  was  celebrated  with  great  pomp  and  lavish- 
ness. 

"  Asshur,  Ishtar  of  Nineveh,  and  the  gods  of  Assyria  I  feasted 
within  it ;  victims,  precious  and  beautiful,  I  sacrificed  before  them, 
and  I  caused  them  to  receive  my  gifts.  The  great  assembly  of  my 
kingdom,  the  chiefs,  and  the  people  of  the  land,  all   of  them,  accord- 


THE  SARCONWES:  ESARHADDOiY.  34 j 

ing  to  their  tribes  and  cities,  on  lofty  seats  I  seated  within  it,  and  I 
made  the  company  joyful.  With  the  wine  of  grapes  I  furnished 
their  tables  and  I  let  martial  music  resound  among  them."* 

II.  We  do  not  know  the  immediate  occasion  of 
Esarhaddon's  expedition  into  Egypt  (his  tenth  cam- 
paign), for  the  cyHnders  stop  just  short  of  it,  and 
we  have  nothing  but  fragments  for  the  last  years  of 
this  king's  reign.  With  the  help  of  these,  however, 
and  by  the  Hght  of  former  precedents,  it  is  not  im- 
possible to  give  a  very  probable  guess  at  the  course 
of  events.  It  was,  beyond  a  doubt,  the  old  story: 
the  Syrian  princes  looking  to  Egypt  for  help.  In- 
deed, one  fragment  expressly  states  that  "  Baal, 
king  of  Tyre,  putting  his  trust  in  Tarku  (Taharka), 
king  of  Kush,  threw  off  the  yoke  of  Assyria."  Now 
this  same  Baal  of  Tyre  heads  the  list  of  vassal  kings 
who  paid  their  court  at  Nineveh.  So  he  can  have 
lost  no  time  after  his  return  home.  He  would 
scarcely  risk  the  venture  alone,  and  there  is  in  the 
Bible  books  a  statement  which  makes  it  probable 
that  the  king  of  Judah  for  one,  at  all  events,  either 
actually  joined  him  or  was  ready  to  do  so.  One  of 
the  Hebrew  historians  (Second  Chronicles,  xxxiii.) 
tells  that  "  the  captains  of  the  host  of  the  kine  of 
Assyria  "  took  Manasseh  out  of  his  capital,  ''bound 
him  with  fetters  and  carried  him  to  Babylon,"  but 
adds  that  he  was  soon  pardoned  and  sent  back  to 
Jerusalem.  This  statement  tallies  very  well  with 
what  we  knov/  of  ^sarhaddon  as  a  king,  who  dwelt 
much  ;n  Babylon,  and  who,  unlike  his  predecessors. 


*  Tr-^nsiation  of  H.  ^  Talbot,  in  "  Records  of  the  Past,"  Vol.  III. 


342  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

was  averse  to  cruelty  and  much  given  to  acts  of 
grace.  The  restoration  of  Manasseh,  who,  we  may 
be  sure,  did  not  spare  protestations  of  repentance 
and  promises  for  the  future,  may  have  taken  place 
after  the  Egyptian  war  was  victoriously  ended,  as 
he  would,  not  unnaturally,  be  detained  as  hostage 
in  Babylon  while  it  lasted."'^ 

12.  The  king  of  Judah  was  probably  included 
among  "  the  allies,"  when  we  are  told  (on  another 
fragment)  that  Esarhaddon  sent  out  his  host 
"against  Tarku,  king  of  Kush,  against  the  men  of 
Egypt  and  against  the  allies  of  Tyre."  Taharka,  it 
is  said,  fled.  But  Tyre,  as  once  before,  under  Shal- 
maneser  and  Sargon,  held  out  a  long  time,  being  in- 
accessible on  its  island  rock.  Esarhaddon,  who  was 
now  marching  down  the  coast,  left  a  body  of  troops 
to  reduce  it  by  famine  and  thirst.  The  city  did  not 
surrender  until  the  war  had  been  decided  against 
Taharka.  "  Its  king,  Baal,  was  pardoned  and  al- 
lowed to  retain  possession  of  his  throne,  and  we  find 
both  him  and  Manasseh  of  Judah  again  at  the  head 
of  a  list  of  vassal  kings  under  Asshurbanipal. 

13.  The  march  from  Raphia  into  Egypt  was  most 
wearisome,  and  could  scarcely  have  been  accom- 
plished but  for  a  contingent  of  camels  and  supplies 
of  water  in  skins,  which  were  furnished  by  a  great 
Bedouin  sheikh.  Details  about  the  war  itself  are 
unfortunately  wanting,  but  the  results  are  known. 

*  Professor  E.  Schrader  thinks  that  this  incident  happened  fully 
twenty-five  years  later,  in  the  reign  of  Esarhaddon's  son,  Asshurba- 
nipal. As  Manasseh  is  said  to  have  reigned  fifty  years,  there  would 
be  no  chronological  impossibility  in  the  way. 


THE  SARGONIDES  :  ESARIIADDON.  ^^^ 

Taharka  retired  southwards  into  his  own  native 
kingdom  of  Kush.  Memphis,  the  capital  of  Lower 
Egypt,  was  taken  and  sacked,  Taharka's  family  cap- 
tured, and  the  Assyrian  rule  established  over  the 
land.  It  is  probable  that  this,  as  it  would  seem, 
rather  easy  victory,  was  in  great  part  brought 
about  by  dissensions  among  the  Egyptians.  The 
local  dynasties  of  the  numerous  principalities,  which 
had  been  shorn  of  their  independence  and  subjected 
to  a  firm  central  authority  by  Shabaka,  the  founder 
of  the  Ethiopian  dynasty  (see  p.  242),  would  hardly 
miss  such  an  opportunity  of  reasserting  themselves. 
This  is  the  state  of  things  depicted  by  the  prophet 
Isaiah,  whose  profound  knowledge  of  contemporary 
politics  made  him  foresee  the  doom  of  Egypt,  weak 
and  divided  against  itself : 

"  And  I  will  stir  up  the  Egyptians  against  the  Egyptians ;  and  they 
shall  fight  every  one  against  his  brother,  and  every  one  against  his 
neighbor  ;  city  against  city  and  kingdom  against  kingdom.  .  .  .  The 
counsel  of  the  wisest  counsellors  of  Pharaoh  has  become  brutish  .... 
they  have  caused  Egypt  to  go  astray  that  are  the  corner-stone  of  her 
tribes  ....  as  a  drunken  man  staggereth."     (Isaiah,  xix.) 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  Esarhaddon  left  Egypt 
divided  among  twenty  petty  rulers,  native  princes, 
with  the  exception  of  a  very  few  Assyrians,  who 
were  probably  set  in  the  places  of  such  as  had  been 
true  to  Taharka  and  his  now  ruined  fortunes.  One 
Necho,  hereditary  prince  of  Sais  (an  important  but 
comparatively  new  city  on  the  left  arm  of  the  Nile), 
he  set  over  the  rest,  having  first  ordered  him  to  give 
his  son  an  Assyrian  name,  and  to  change  in  like 
manner  that  of  his  capital.    So  when  Esarhaddon,  on 


344  ^-^-^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

his  way  home,  had  a  stele  of  himself  cut  in  a  rock 
of  the  Phoenician  coast,  at  the  mouth  of  the  river 
now  called  Nahr-el-kelb  (see  ill.  No.  66),  side  by  side 
with  that  of  his  father,  he  could  with  literal  truth 
assume  the  new  and  peculiar  title  which  heads  the 
long  inscription  on  that  monument:  '' King  of  the 
kings  of  Muzur  (Egypt)."  On  that  same  rock,  six 
hundred  years  before,  Ramses  II.,  the  victor  of  Ka- 
desh  (see  p.  30),  had  had  Jiis  effigy  carved  out,  to- 
gether with  several  more  sculptures,  to  commemo- 
rate his  triumphs  in  his  wars  against  the  Hittites. 
When,  therefore,  the  Assyrian  conquerors  joined 
their  steles  to  those  of  the  older  Egyptian  conqueror, 
it  was  with  the  distinct  intention  of  humiliating 
Egypt  by  contrasting  her  former  glory  with  her  pres- 
ent low  state.  And  there  they  are  to  this  day, 
peaceably  together,  and  the  distance  between  them 
is  as  though  it  were  not ;  the  six  centuries  that  di- 
vide them  have  melted  into  the  hazy  background  of 
time,  the  murmuring  waves  of  which  beat  drowsily 
around  their  mighty  memories, — as  those  of  the 
bluest  of  seas  against  the  rock  from  which  they  si- 
lently preach  of  greatness  departed,  of  rivalries 
hushed,  fierce  passions  quenched  in  the  cool  shadow 
of  Death,  which  mellows  all  glare,  and  soothes  all 
turmoil  into  glorified  dreams  of  the  past. 

14.  Among  Assyrian  rulers,  Esarhaddon  undoubt- 
edly is,  as  has  been  unanimously  admitted,  by  far 
"  the  noblest  and  most  gracious  figure."  "^  His  end- 
too,  has  a  certain  romantic  charm.     He  voluntarily 

*  Ed.  Meyer,  "  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  474. 


THE  SARGONIDES:  ESARHADDON. 


;45 


laid  down  the  burden  of  royalty  and  abdicated  in 
favor  of  his  son,  Asshurbanipal.  It  were  vain  to 
look  for  motives  and  explanations  in  Assyrian  an- 
nals ;  they  give  the  bare  facts.  It  is  thought,  how- 
ever, that  the  king's  health  was  impaired,  and  that 
he  did  not  feel  equal  to  face  the  difficult  and  troub- 
lous times  which  were  coming  on  ;  for  already  Ta- 
harka  was  rallying  from  the  defeat  he  had  suffered 
only  four  years  before  ;  the  princes  who  had  fallen 
off  from  him  had  found  that  they  had  not  gained 
much  by  exchanging  his  supremacy  against  the  As- 
syrian rule,  and  a  formidable  coalition  was  preparing 
to  re-open  hostilities,  which  would  call  for  speedy 
and  vigorous  action.  It  was  natural  that  the  weary 
king,  with  the  presentiment  on  him  of  his  approach- 
ing end,  should  resign  the  task  into  the  hands  of  his 
young  and  active  son,  who,  moreover,  seems  to  have 
been  associated  for  some  time  with  the  cares  and 
duties  of  power.  He  solemnly  and  publicly  re- 
signed to  him  the  royalty  of  Assyria.  We  know, 
from  the  annals  of  Asshurbanipal,  the  very  date  of 
the  event.  On  the  I2th  day  of  April,  668  B.C. — a 
lucky  day, — "  he  assembled  the  people  of  Asshur, 
great  and  small,  and  from  the  shores  of  the  Upper 
and  Lower  Seas  (the  Mediterranean  and  the  Per- 
sian Gulf),"  for  the  consecration  of  his  son's  royalty, 
to  whom  the  oath  of  allegiance  was  sworn  before 
the  great  gods.  From  this  moment  Asshurbanipal 
''  ruled  the  kingdom  of  Asshur,"  and  "  entered,  with 
joy  and  shouting,"  into  the  royal  palace  of  Sennach- 
erib ''  in  which  his  father,  Esarhaddon,  was  born,  and 
had   grown    to  man's    estate  ....  where    he    had 


346  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

reigned,  and  whence  he  had  extended  his  dominion 
over  all  the  kings,  and  increased  the  number  of  his 
subjects  at  the  cost  of  foreign  nations." 

15.  Esarhaddon  reserved  to  himself  the  royalty 
of  Babylon,  whither  he  retired,  but  even  that  only 
nominally,  for  he  appointed  as  viceroy  a  younger 
son  of  his,  Shamash-Shumukin.  There  is  a  letter 
to  him  from  Asshurbanipal,  wherein  the  young  king 
entitles  himself  "  king  of  Asshur,"  and  addresses 
his  father  as  "  king  of  Kar-Dunyash,  of  Shumir  and 
Accad."  Esarhaddon  died  at  Babylon  within  the 
year  after  his  abdication. 


XL 


THE  GATHERING  OF  THE  STORM. — THE  LAST  COMER 
AMONG  THE  GREAT  RACES.* 

I.  If  we  pause  to  think  of  it,  we  shall  be  sur- 
prised to  find  what  a  very  small  patch  of  our  earth 
has  hitherto  engrossed  us.  We  have,  indeed,  had 
side-glimpses  of  Egypt  and  even  Arabia,  and  the 
Phoenicians  drew  our  eyes  for  a  moment  towards 
the  far  west  of  Europe.  But,  on  the  whole,  we 
have,  in  reality,  for  nearly  two  volumes,  been  cir- 
cling round  and  round  within  a  truncated  triangle 
of  land,  bounded  on  three  sides  by  mountain  ranges, 
— those  of  Lebanon,  Nairi  and  Zagros, — and  on  the 
fourth  by  an  imaginary  line  drawn  across  the  des- 
ert from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  Mediterranean  ; 
and  the  merest  glance  at  a  map  of  the  world  will 
show  us  what  an  imperceptible  particle  of  the  east- 
ern hemisphere  that  makes.  And  of  the  four 
great  races  which  count  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
as  being  so-called  "  culture-races,"  only  three  have 
appeared  as  prominent  actors  on  this  limited  but 
most  momentous  area:  the  Turanian,  the  Hamitic 
and  the  Semitic.     Of  these  we  have  seen  the  former 


*  This  chapter  should  be  followed  step  by  step  on  the  second  map, 
"Navigations  of  the  Phoenicians,"  etc., or  it  will  be  read  to  very  little 
purpose. 

347 


348 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


consistently  supplanted,  if  not  obliterated,  by  the 
two  later  and  more  gifted  sister  races,  and  among 
these  again  the  Semitic  race  steadily  gaining  pre- 
eminence. We  have  now  reached  the  time  when 
the  fourth,  the  last  comer  among  the  great  races, 
advances  rapidly  to  the  front, — the  race  which  is 
henceforth  to  lead  in  the  world  ;  which  even  now 
maintains  its  rule,  nay,  spreads  it  each  day  more 
widely  and  plants  it  more  firmly  over  all  the  earth  ; 
the  race  to  which  the  people  of  this  continent  be- 
long, as  inheritors  of  the  blood  and  culture  of  classi- 
cal antiquity  and  of  all  the  nations  of  Europe. 

2.  This  is  the  race,  several  members  of  which  are 
mentioned  in  Chapter  X.  of  Genesis  (2-5)  as  chil- 
dren of  Japhet.  With  some  of  these  we  have 
become  slightly  acquainted  in  the  course  of  the 
preceding  pages :  Yavan,  Elishah,  KiTTiM,  all 
branches  of  the  Greek  family  of  peoples  ;  Tarshish 
in  the  West,  and,  in  the  opposite  direction,  Madai 
(the  Medes),  and,  quite  lately,  GOMER  (the  GlMlR- 
RAI  of  the  inscriptions,  the  CIMMERIANS  of  the 
classics).  (See  p.  338.)  But  the  members  of  the 
Japhetic  family  known  to  the '  biblical  Hebrews 
were  only  a  very  few  ofTshoots  of  that  most  prolific 
stock,  of  which,  moreover,  we  must  seek  the  orig- 
inal seat  in  a  more  remotely  eastern  region  than 
any  they  had  any  knowledge  of, — that  vast  and  im- 
perfectly explored  "Table-land  of  Central  Asia," 
which  is  more  and  more  generally  thought  to  have 
been  the  common  cradle  of  mankind."^ 

*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  p.  i86. 


^ 


THE  GATHERING  OF  THE  STORM.  ^^q 

3.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that,  when  the 
first  great  dispersion  took  place  (in  the  course  of 
how  many  centuries — who  shall  say  ?),  a  large  divis- 
ion lingered  behind  in  the  old  homesteads  for  ages, 
thereby  developing  a  very  distinctive  type,  both 
physical  and  moral,  and  a  language  more  varied, 
more  flexible,  more  capable  of  perfectionment  than 
any  of  the  others — the  language  which  became  the 
parent-tongue  of  all  the  European  languages,  ancient 
and  modern,  and  of  some  Oriental  ones.  In  that 
tongue,  when  these  loiterers  at  length  obeyed  the 
common  law  and  began  to  move  and  disperse  in  their 
turn  in  quest  of  novelty  and  adventure,  they  called 
themselves  Aryas,  i.e.,  "the  noble,"  "the  vener- 
able," doubtless  asserting  thereby  their  own  superi- 
ority over  the  native  tribes  or  peoples  which  they 
found  wherever  they  pushed  their  way,  and  which 
they  invariably  subjugated  or  destroyed,  and,  in  all 
cases,  looked  upon  with  the  utmost  contempt.  For 
this  reason,  this  entire  division  of  mankind — the 
fourth  great  race,  with  all  the  nations  into  which  it 
divided  and  subdivided  in  the  course  of  time — has 
been  called  the  ARYAN  Race.  This,  at  least,  is  one 
of  the  names  under  which  it  is  most  generally 
known.  There  is  another,  which  took  its  origin  in 
the  manner  of  the  division  of  the  race. 

4.  For  while  one  portion  restricted  their  wander- 
ings within  the  limits  of  their  own  continent,  Asia, 
the  other,  at  long  intervals  but  in  huge  instalments, 
poured  into  Europe,  mainly  through  the  wide  gap 
of  fiat  steppe-land  that  stretches  between  the  south- 
ern outspurs  of  the  Oural  Mountains  and   the  Cas- 


350 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


pian  Sea, — a  gap  which  may  be  said  rather  to   unite 
the  two  continents  than   to   separate   them,  it  is   so 
invitingly    accessible.     The  only  obstacle  which  it 
opposed  to  migrating  crowds  was  the  Oural  River, 
and  rivers  are   never  much   of  a   barrier ;  where   a 
ridge  of  mountains  will  arrest  a  migration  for  a  hun- 
dred years,  a  river  w^ill  not  do  so  for  a  month.     All 
the  nations  of  Europe  could  trace  their  origin  to  these 
migrations  if  there  w^ere  a  sufficiency  of  monuments. 
As  to  the  Asiatic  portion   of  the  race,  an  important, 
— in  some  respects  the  most  important, — branch  of 
it,  descended  into  the  great  peninsula  of  India  ;  not, 
of  course,  across  the  wide  and  utterly  impassable  belt 
of  the  Himalaya,  the  highest  mountain  range  in  the 
world,  but  through  that  break  between  the  western 
end  of  the  Himalaya  and  the   chain   of  the    Hindu- 
Kush,  through  which  the  river  Indus  forces  its  way 
by  an    abrupt  bend.     For  this  reason,  the  Asiatic 
and    European   branches  of    the  Aryan    race  have 
been    comprised   under    the   double  name  of  The 
Indo-European  Race,    which  felicitously    recalls 
their  original   unity,  while   indicating  their  present 
divergence.     German  scholars  at  one  time  introduced 
the    fashion    of    calling    the  race   IndO-Germanic, 
pointedly  ignoring  all  other  European  nations  with 
a  superciliousness   somewhat  savoring  of  arrogance. 
But  the  scientific  world  in    general  very  properly 
ignored  this  bit  of  misplaced  patriotism,  and  adopted 
the  other  far  more  correct  and  comprehensive  name. 
As  to  the  biblical  one — Japhetic  Race — it  has  been 
discarded  altogether,  as  insufficient. 

5.  The  Indo-European  race  entered  the  historical 


THE  GAT//ER/XG  OF  THE  STORM. 


351 


stage  of  the  world  under  very  auspicious  conditions. 
Not  only  were  they  the  inheritors  of  all  that  had 
already  been  done  by  others  in  the  way  of  culture, 
but  they  brought,  fully  developed,  to  their  task  of 
continuing  the  great  work,  the  two  great  character- 
istics which  stamp  the  race  as  the  noblest  and  most 
perfect  variety  of  the  human  species,  and  by  which 
they  were  to  make  the  world  their  own  :  the  fac- 
ulty of  enduring  and  adapting  themselves  to  any 
conditions  of  life,  and — highest  gift  of  all — the  fac- 
ulty of  indefinite  improvement,  unlimited  achieve- 
ment in  any  line  of  knowledge,  thought,  art  or  ac- 
tion to  which  they  might  be  led  to  apply  them- 
selves. 

6.  The  great  Asiatic  half  of  the  Aryan  race  came 
in  time  to  split  itself  into  two  distinct  portions.  One, 
as  already  mentioned,  descended  into  India  and 
stayed  there.  The  other,  wandering  to  the  south- 
west of  the  primeval  home,  and  after  crossing  sun- 
dry mountain  ridges,  spread  over  the  vast  region 
comprising  the  modern  countries  of  Kaboul  and 
Afghanistan  and  the  eastern  half  of  modern  Per- 
sia. This  region  was,  in  classical  antiquity,  broken 
up  into  many  not  particularly  well  known  countries 
with  strange,  unfamiliar  names.  Of  these,  BaC- 
TRIA  is  perhaps  the  most  clearly  defined  ;  but  by 
far  the  greater  part  of  this  remote  territory  w^ent 
under  the  vague  but  significant  name  of  Ariana, 
/.  e.y  territory  occupied  by  Aryan  peoples.  Or  per- 
haps, more  properly,  ''  tribes  "  ;  for  all  this  region, 
unlike  Bactria,  which  is  a  pleasant  land  of  moun- 
tains and  valleys,  not  ill-provided  with  water,  is  com- 


352 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


posed  of  grassy  steppes  alternating  with  sandy 
wastes,  where  rivers,  after  a  brief  course  through 
some  oasis,  run  dry  or  soak  into  the  sand,  so  that 
migrating  crowds,  as  they  traversed  it  in  their  west- 
ward course,  remained  nomads  of  necessity,  finding 
no  inducement  to  settle  down  to  farming.  But  as 
they  moved  still  further  westward  and  reached  the 
outposts  of  the  Zagros  and  the  mountains  of  Elam, 
they  did  find  such  inducement,  amply,  since  those 
rich  and  fertile  slopes  and  valleys  and  the  adjoining 
highlands  had  long  been  occupied  by  ancient  peo- 
ples of  an  earlier  race  ;  so  that  they  found  cities  and 
well  cultivated  lands  to  take  possession  of,  and  a 
native  population  ready  to  their  hand,  to  be  re- 
duced to  subjection  and  subserviency. 

7.  The  name  '' Ariana "  became  corrupted  into 
Eran,  or  Iran,^  and  this  has  been,  and  still  is,  the 
designation  undeV  which  comes  the  entire  family 
of  Aryan  peoples  that  have  dispersed  over  this  par- 
ticular portion  of  Asia.  In  their  wanderings  over 
the  face  of  the  Eranian  steppes  and  deserts  they 
continually  encountered-tribes  of  Turanian  nomads, 
who,  being  the  older  in  possession,  naturally  treated 
them  as  intruders.  They  were,  moreover,  encom- 
passed on  the  north  and  north-east  by  unmixed 
herds  of  the  same  race — the  TURCOMEN  of  mod- 
ern Turkestan.  Thus  the  most  deep-rooted  hos- 
tility, the  most  inextinguishable  hatred,  was  estab- 
lished between  the  two  races,  and  has  endured,   un- 


*  Practically  the    same  as  Erin,  or  Ireland,  both  being  equally 
evolved  from  the  original  Arya. 


THE  GATHERING  OF  THE  STORM. 


353 


mitii^ated,  from  prehistoric  times  through  all  the 
long  line  of  ages.  "-  Eran  and  Turan  "  are  to  this 
day  opposite  terms  in  geography,  ethnology  and 
Asiatic  politics,  and  the  strife  of  Eran  and  Turan, 
as  it  has  ever  been  the  substance  of  those  peoples' 
life,  has  been  all  along  the  one  theme  of  their  na- 
tional traditions,  poetry  and  epos. 

8.  The  first  among  Eranian  nations  to  come  for- 
ward and  win  renown  and  power  were  the  Medes, 
called  '*  Madai  "  in  chapter  ten  of  Genesis  as  well 
as  on  the  Assyrian  monuments.  It  is  impossible  to 
guess  how  long  it  took  them  to  wander  from  Eastern 
Eran  to  the  foot  of  the  Zagros.  Towards  the  mid- 
dle of  the  ninth  century  B.C.  they  must  already  have 
been  in  possession  of  many  of  its  valleys  and  outer 
slopes,  for  it  was  about  that  time  that  they  first 
came  in  collision  with  Assyrian  forces,  and  we  find 
their  name  in  the  inscriptions  of  Raman-nirari  III. 
(See  p.  194.)  After  that  we  can  see  them  gathering 
power  and  importance,  as  shown  by  the  fact  that 
they  are  mentioned  more  and  more  frequently  in 
later  reigns,  until  expeditions  against  Medes,  first  in 
the  fastnesses  and  highlands  of  the  Zagros,  then  far 
beyond  this  barrier,  even  into  the  Eranian  deserts, 
become  one  of  the  chief  preoccupations  of  Assyrian 
kings.  They  speak  of  three  kinds  of  Medes  :  the 
**  strong  "  or  '*  powerful  Medes,"  probably  the  war- 
like tribes  that  had  gained  a  permanent  stand  in  the 
fastnesses  of  the  Zagros  ;  the  *'  distant  Medes,"  or 
"  Medes  of  the  Rising  Sun,"  with  cities  and  settle- 
ments scattered  along  the  southern  slopes  of  the 
Elburz  Mountains,  and  further  east;  and  the  "  No- 
23 


354  ^^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

madic  Medes,"  apparently  rovers  of  the  Eranian 
steppes.  These  latter  are  ingeniously  called  '' Ma- 
dai  AribV  ("Arab  Medes"),  to  indicate  that  their 
mode  of  life  was  similar  to  that  of  the  Arabs.  It  is 
the  boast  of  later  kings,  from  Tiglath-Pileser  II. 
downward,  that  they  subdued  the  "  distant  Medes 
of  the  Rising  Sun,"  and  that  their  rule  extended 
eastward  to  Mount  Bikni.  Unfortunately  it  is  not 
very  clear  as  yet  where  exactly  in  the  East  these 
mountains,  said  to  be  rich  in  marble  or  alabaster, 
are  to  be  looked  for. 

9.  If  these  indications  were  not  sufficient  to  show 
that,  even  as  late  as  Esarhaddon's  reign,  the  Medes 
did  not  yet  form  a  united  and  compact  nation,  the 
fact  is  fully  proved  by  the  absence  of  national  gov- 
ernment among  them.  Lavish  as  all  ancient  records 
are  with  the  title  of  "  king,"  which  is  awarded  to 
every  petty  chieftain,  we  never  hear  of  Median 
"  kingdoms  "  or  "  kings,"  but  only  of  ''  towns  "  and 
"  heads  "  or  "  chiefs  of  towns,"  and  that  points  to  a 
very  loose  social  constitution,  and  a  form  of  gov- 
ernment the  most  primitive  of  all  after  the  patri- 
archal. It  is  what  may  be  called  the  "  clan-stage  " 
of  society.  They  even  fought  in  clans, — spearmen, 
archers,  and  cavalry  ''all  mingled  in  one  mass  and 
confused  together,"  as  they  were  brought  into  the 
field  by  each  clan-chief,  instead  of  being  divided  into 
distinct  bodies  and  companies  as  regularly  organized 
armies  are.  This  detail  we  owe  to  Herodotus,  the 
Greek  traveller  and  historian,  who  also  informs  us, 
in  perfect  accordance  with  what  we  gather  from  the 
Assyrian    monuments,  that    the    Medes  in    ancient 


THE  GA  THE  RING  OF  THE  STORM. 


355 


times  "  dwelt  in  scattered  villages,  without  any  cen- 
tral authority." 

10.  It  is  probable  that  they  intrenched  themselves 
first  in  the  very  rugged  mountain  land  between  the 
head  ridge  of  the  Zagros — now  held  by  robber  tribes 
of  Kurds — and  the  Caspian  Sea,  then  descended  and 
spread  gradually  to  the  south-east,  occupying  the 
different  countries  and  small  kingdoms  as  the  As- 
syrians vacated  them  after  plundering  and  devastat- 
ing them,  and  choosing  the  times  when  they  were 
left  prostrate,  impoverished  and  incapable  of  efifi- 
cient  resistance.  Thus,  some  principalities  were 
formed  which  became  the  nucleus  of  the  future 
kingdom.  One  of  the  earliest  was  that  kingdom  of 
Ellip,  which,  under  the  old  king  Dalta,  had  so  long 
been  loyal  to  Sargon.  (See  p.  265.)  When  Media 
had  become  a  united  and  powerful  state,  its  capital, 
ECBATANA,  or  Agbatana  (modern  HamADAN),  was 
situated  in  the  midst  of  that  very  district,  which 
was  called  by  the  classics  Media  Proper,  or  Great 
Media. 

11.  It  is  evident  that  they  must  everywhere  have 
found  ancient  populations,  with  set  customs  and  in- 
stitutions of  their  own.  These  populations  were 
mostly  of  Turanian  stock,  very  likely  mixed  with 
Hamitic,  or  even  (as  probably  in  Elam)  with  Semitic 
elements.  Aryans  never  were  much  inclined  to 
mix  with  other  races ;  so  the  newcomers  formed  a 
haughty  governing  aristocracy  among  the  people 
whom  they  subjected  to  their  rule.  The  distinction 
was  further  kept  up  by  the  two  greatest  dividers 
of  men,  next  to  race  :  difTerence  of  language  and 


356  '^^E  STOR  Y  OF  ASSYRIA. 

difference  of  religion.  Still  it  was  hardly  to  be  ex- 
pected that  the  conquerors  should  not  be  influenced 
at  all  by  contact  with  nations  who  were  far  from  be- 
ing in  a  state  of  barbarism,  whose  culture,  indeed, 
being  old  and  established,  was,  so  far,  superior  to  that 
of  their  conquerors,  who  were  only  just  coming  out 
of  the  nomadic  stage.  So,  when  the  Medes  have 
become  one  nation  and  one  state,  (the  name  includ- 
ing all  the  various  alien  elements  either  assimilated 
or  reduced  to  subjection  by  them),  we  shall  find 
them  a  very  mixed  people,  and  their  religion  es- 
pecially, in  its  final  form,  a  most  remarkable  product 
of  the  fusion  between  older  forms  of  worship  of 
entirely  different,  nay,  opposite  types.  But  these 
subjects  can  be  properly  and  fully  treated  only  in 
another  volume,  which  will  be  principally  devoted 
to  the  ancient  Eranian  race.  In  this  place  we  have 
to  do  with  the  Medes  in  so  far  only  as  they  form  one 
of  the  heaviest  clouds  in  the  storm  that  is  fast  gath- 
ering over  the  too-exalted  head  of  Asshur.  Just 
one  moment  longer,  however,  we  may  pause,  to  note 
how  unlike  the  real  facts  are  to  the  string  of  fan- 
tastic inventions  that  have  been  worked  into  a  na- 
tional mythical  legend  in  the  fabulous  story  of  Sem- 
iramis.  (See  pp.  196-200.)  There  we  see  a  Median 
empire  flourishing  and  conquered  by  the  Assyrian 
Ninus  over  2000  years  B.C.,  i.  e.,  about  1500  years 
ahead  of  the  time  when  Medes  are  heard  of  first  as 
an  insignificant  barbarous  tribe,  and  some  400  years 
before  Assyria  appears  at  all  as  a  separate  country. 
But  then  the  Greeks  got  the  story  from  Median 
sources,   and    the   Medes,  who    had  succeeded   the 


.      THE  GATHERING  OF  THE  STORM.  35; 

Assyrians  as  masters  in  Asia,  may  have  liked,  from 
national  vanity,  to  exaggerate  the  duration  and 
consequent  importance  of  the  empire  they  had 
conquered,  and  also  to  represent  their  conquest  m 
the  light  of  reprisals  for  one  they  had  suffered  m 
ancient  times  at  the  hands  of  the  now  annihilated 

rival. 

12.  But  if  the  Medes,  together  with  the  Chal- 
deans, alone  reaped  the  fruit  of  the  general  revolt 
which  was  now  soon  to  encompass  Asshur,  seem- 
ingly at  the  height  of  his  glory,  the  catastrophe  was 
by" no  means  due  to  these  two  agents  alone.  The 
combined  efforts  of  West,  South  and  East  would 
still  long  have  continued  unavailing  to  lay  the  giant 
prostrate,  even  though,  in  the  words  of  a  modern 
writer,  ''  his  own  victories  were  slowly  bleeding 
him  to  death."  In  the  storm  that  was  steadily 
gathering,  there  was,  far  away  in  the  North,  a  cloud 
hitherto  unregarded,  which  kept  growing,  darkening, 
nearing,  until,  joining  with  the  others,  it  overspread 
the  sky,  and  thundered  forth  Asshur's  doom.  In 
countries  far  beyond  the  ken  of  the  small  fraction 
of  the  world  whose  fortunes  have  hitherto  occupied 

us, the   immense  open   region  north  of  the  Black 

Sea,  now  known  as  Southern  Russia, — events  had 
been  going  on  for  years, — probably  hundreds  of 
years, — which,  obscure  and  confused  as  the  knowl- 
edge of  them  was  forever  to  remain,  were,  in  the 
fulness  of  time,  to  give  the  decisive  push  to  the 
scales  in  which  more  than  that  small  world's  des- 
tinies hung  anxiously  balanced.  From  the  myste- 
rious depths  of  Central  Asia,  Aryan  hosts   kept   go- 


358 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


ing  forth  at  intervals,  drawn  in  the  same  fateful  di- 
rection, crossing  great  rivers,  skirting  the  north  of 
the  Caspian,  and  pouring  through  the  gap  between 
that  and  the  Oural  Mountains — a  gap  which  must 
have  been  less  wide  than  it  is  now,  in  proportion  as 
the  Caspian  Sea  was  more  extensive.  The  plains  of 
Russia  are  seemingly  boundless.  No  barriers  there 
but  rivers,  very  many  and  wide,  the  noblest  in  the 
world  next  to  the  mighty  streams  of  the  American 
continent.  There  nation  after  nation  could  expand, 
disperse,  roam,  or  settle  at  will.  Truly,  if  Central 
Asia  were  the  cradle  of  the  human  race,  here  was 
that  of  modern  Europe,  for  there  is  not  one  of  the 
nations  which  now  people  it  whose  ancestors  did 
not  at  some  time  halt  or  wander  in  some  part  of 
Russia  in  their  westward  progress.  The  ancestors 
of  the  Greeks  and  Italians  had  passed  long  ago,  for 
at  the  time  which  we  have  reached — Esarhaddon's 
death,  668  B.C. — Greece  was  a  prosperous  and  al- 
ready highly  cultured  land,  and  Rome  herself  was 
nearly  a  hundred  years  old.  So  that  the  Aryan  race 
was  flourishing  and  bravely  working  out  the  promise 
of  its  brilliant  destiny  in  the  south  of  Europe,  when 
it  was  scarcely  beginning  to  push  its  way  to  the 
front  in  Western  Asia. 

13.  The  south  of  Russia,  by  its  extraordinary  fer- 
tility, has  always  been  unusually  attractive,  either  to 
the  nomad  who  wanted  pasture,  or  to  the  farmer  who 
wanted  crops.  It  was,  indeed,  just  the  land  to  tempt 
the  nomad  into  settling  and  farming,  and  its  ancient 
populations  long  lived  in  a  stage  of  culture  partak- 
ing of  both  modes  of  life.     The  Greeks  knew  them 


THE  GA  THE  RING  OF  THE  STORM. 


359 


vaguely  under  the  general  name  of  CIMMERIANS 
(more  correctly  KiMMERIANS).  Herodotus  knows 
of  certain  "Cimmerian  cities,"  and  tells  that  the 
straits  which  unite  the  Azoff  Sea  to  the  Black  Sea 
were  called  "  Cimmerian  Bosphorus."  To  the 
Greeks  this  region  was  the  extremest  north,  situated 
at  the  uttermost  bounds  of  the  world,  and  the  absurd- 
est  stories  were  current  about  it.  Thus  it  was  a 
vulgar  belief  that  there  lay  one  of  the  entrances  to 
the  lower  world  (the  land  of  the  dead),  and  that  the 
sun  never  shone  there,  whence  the  proverbial  expres- 
sion :  ''Cimmerian  darkness."  Educated,  well-trav- 
elled men,  of  course,  knew  better;  witness  Herodo- 
tus, who,  though  he  never  got  as  far  as  the  lands 
north  of  the  Black  Sea  himself,  took  great  pains  to 
collect  trustworthy  information  about  it.* 

14.  It  appears  that,  at  some  time  not  specified, 
another  large  instalment  of  Eranian  nomads,  being 
pressed  upon  from  behind  by  certain  savage  tribes 
east  of  the  Caspian,  took  the  usual  road,  crossed  the 
Oural  River,  the  Ra  (modern  Volga),  the  Tanais 
(modern  Don),  and  overran  the  vast  plains  long 
held  by  the  Cimmerians.  The  Greeks  called  these 
hordes  ScYTHS,  or  SCYTHIANS,  the  Asiatics  Sakhi, 
or  Saki,  both  exceedingly  vague  and  misleading 
denominations,  since  they  denoted  all  the  roving 
barbarous  peoples  of  the  extreme  North  and  North- 
east, many  of  which,  especially  in  the  latter  direc- 


*  About  the  Cimmerians  and  tlieir  kindred  peoples,  see  espe- 
cially the  chapter  "  Gomer"  in  Fr.  Lenormant's  "  Origines  de  I'His- 
toire"  (Vol.  II.,  part  2d,  p.  332,  ff.). 


360 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


tion,  were  undoubtedly  Turanian.     But  the  Scythi- 
ans that  passed  into    Europe  were   as  undoubtedly 
Aryan,  of  the  Eranian  branch.     These  late  comers, 
coveting  the  undivided  possession  of  the  land,  drove 
the  Cimmerians  steadily  before  them,  and  although 
a  part  of  these  seem  to  have  intrenched  themselves 
in  the  peninsula  now  named  CRIMEA,  by  means  of  a 
wall  across  the  narrow  isthmus  (known  to  Herod- 
otus as   ''  the  Cimmerian  Wall  "),  the  mass  of  the 
people,  after  making  a  desperate  stand  on  the  banks 
of  the  river  Tyras  (modern  DNIESTER)  and  suffer- 
ing a  signal   and  murderous   defeat,  abandoned  the 
now  desert  land  to   the   invaders  and   retreated   fur- 
ther West,  or  rather  to  the  south-west.      Having  thus 
been  forced  to  resume  their  wandering  mode  of  life, 
they  crossed    the    river   ISTER    (modern    DANUBE), 
descended    into     the    rugged    land     known    to    the 
ancients    as    Thrace  (now   Bulgaria  and  Rou- 
MELIA),  already  occupied   by  a   settled  population 
of  the  same  stock  as   themselves,  the  wild  and  war- 
like nation  of  the  Thracians,  which  never  thoroughly 
mixed  with  the  Greeks,  nor  assimilated  their  refine- 
ment of  mind  and  manners.     A  large  surplus  of  the 
dislodged  Cimmerians  overflowed,  across  the  Bos- 
phorus,  into  Asia  Minor,  where  they  caused  a  com- 
motion not  unlike  that  raised   in  water  by  the   fall 
of  a  stone. 

15.  History  begins,  for  Asia  Minor,  far  later  than 
for  the  Semitic  river-land  and  the  sea-coast  of 
Canaan.  Even  the  beginnings  of  the  Greek  colo- 
nies along  the  Ionian  coast-land  and  the  southern 
shore  of  the  Black  Sea  are  wrapt  in  the  twilight 


67. — HITTITE   ROCK-SCULPTURE    IN    THE    PASS    OF    KARAHEL    (NEAR    SMYRNA). 
(erroneously  thought   by   THE   GREEKS  TO    REPRESENT   RAMSES   IL) 


362 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


of  myth  and  epic  legend  which,  on  the  Euphrates, 
had  made  way  for  authentic  monumental  records  as 
early  as  2000  B.C.,  and,  in  some  instances,  much 
earlier  still.  As  to  the  population,  political  divis- 
ion, and  culture  of  the  wonderfully  favored  land 
which  goes  by  the  general  name  of  "Asia  Minor," 
it  is  only  lately  that  we  have  been  enabled  to  form 
a  tolerably  trustworthy,  though  still  very  vague  and 
general  idea  on  these  subjects.  The  researches, 
based  on  recently  discovered  monuments  to  which 
Professor  A.  H.  Sayce  has  especially  devoted  him- 
self for  the  last  few  years,  have  shown  that  it  was 
the  seat  of  an  ancient  and  very  high  culture, 
brought  thither  by  Hittite  settlers  who,  probably  as 
early  as  the  fifteenth  century  B.C.,  began  to  spread 
in  that  direction  from  the  mountain-lands  of 
Taurus  and  Nairi  (later  Armenia),  which  we  found 
occupied  in  their  eastern  portions  by  an  impor- 
tant branch  of  the  race,  the  people  of  Urartu 
(Alarodians).     (See  pp.  30,  31,  33,  203-205.) 

16.  In  Ionia  proper,  on  the  road  between  the 
ancient  cities  EPHESUS  and  Sardis,  the  capital  of 
•ancient  Lydia,  and  25  miles  from  modern  SMYRNA, 
there  is  a  pass  through  a  steep  and  rocky  ridge. 
In  that  pass  the  traveller  is  confronted  by  sculp- 
tures cut  in  the  rock,  and  representing  a  warrior  in 
an  unfamiliar  garb.  Herodotus  saw  them  when 
they  were  probably  in  better  preservation  than 
they  are  now,  and  marvelled  much  at  them.  He 
admits  that  the  lonians  did  not  know  whom  they 
represented,  but  is  under  the  impression  that  they 
were  meant   for  the   Egyptian   conqueror,   Ramses 


68. — HITTITE   EOCK-SCyLPTURE   AT    IBRIZ    IN    CILICIA,    REPRESENTING 

A   HITTITE  GOD. 


363 


3^4 


THE  S  TOR  y  OF  A  SS  YRIA . 


II.,  whom  the  Greeks  knew  under  the  name  of 
Sesostris,  and  erroneous!}'  believed  to  have  ex- 
tended his  rule  beyond  the  Taurus.  There  is  a 
certain  humor  in  the  fact  that,  instead  of  being  the 
memorial  of  an  Egyptian  conquest,  these  sculp- 
tures should  have  turned  out  to  commemorate  the 
advance  and  rule  of  the  Egyptians'  most  constant 
and  powerful  enemies.     (See  ill.  ('ij .) 

17.  Another  most  interesting  Hittite  monument 
is  the  rock-sculpture  at  Ibriz,  in  Cilicia,  somewhat 
to  the  north-west  of  Tarsus.     It  is  described  as 

"representing  a  thanksgiving  to  the  god  who  gives  fertility  to  the 
earth.  The  god  is  a  husbandman,  marked  as  a  giver  of  corn  and 
wine  by  his  attributes  ....  he  wears  the  very  dress  still  used  by 
the  peasantry  ....  the  high-peaked  cap  still  in  use  among  some 
Kurdish  tribes  ;  the  tunic  fastened  round  the  waist  by  a  girdle  .  .  .  .  ; 
and  the  tip-tilted  shoes  are  the  ordinary  sandals  of  the  country, 
with  exactly  the  same  bandages  and  mode  of  fastening.  ...  It 
is  interesting  also  to  notice  that  some  of  the  patterns  on  the  priest's 
dress  have  not  yet  gone  out  of  fashion  amongst  the  Cappadocian 
peasantry."*  (See  ill.  68.) 

18.  Cappadocia  boasts  numerous  Hittite  remains 
— not  only  rock-sculptures  and  sepulchres  hewn  in 
the  rock,  but  buildings,  cities,  palaces,  with  portals 
guarded  by  lions,  and  apartments  disposed  much  in 
the  Assyrian  fashion.  The  most  important  of 
these  ruins  are  those  discovered  at  Boghaz-Keui, 
where  the  palace  is  overlooked  by  a  flat  rock, 
crowned  with  two  citadels,  a  little  beyond  which 
rise  walls  of  live  rock,  and  these,  having  been 
slightly  smoothed  for  the  purpose,  are  covered  with 

*  Colonel  Sir  C.  W.  Wilson,  quoted  in  Wright's  "  Empire  of  the 
Hittites,"  p.  61. 


THE  GA  THE  RING  OF  THE  STORM. 


365 


sculptures  representing  an  entire  procession  of 
strange-looking  personages  and  animals  almost 
surely  of  mythological  import.  All  over  Asia 
Minor,  in  fact,  are  scattered  traces  of  an  early 
and  powerful  Hittite  culture,  much  of  which  must 
have  survived  the  greatness  of  this  remarkable 
race.  Thus  when  a  Greek  colony  w^as  established 
at  Ephesus,  in  Ionia,  they  found  there  a  sanctuary 
of  Atargatis  (the  Hittite  nature-goddess,  answer- 
ing to  the  Semitic  Ishtar  and  Canaanitic  Ashtoreth), 
the  centre  of  whose  worship  was  the  national  capi- 
tal, Karkhemish.  (See  p.  35.)  They  were  especially 
struck  by  the  characteristic  peculiarity  of  this  wor- 
ship— the  hundreds,  sometimes  even  thousands,  of 
ministering  women, — and  their  vivid  fancy  at  once 
transformed  it  into  a  wild  and  fantastic  legend,  that 
of  the  warrior-women,  the  Amazons.  ''  In  early 
art,"  says  Professor  Sayce,  "  the  Amazons  are  robed 
in  Hittite  costume,  and  armed  with  the  double- 
headed  axe  ;  and  the  dances  they  performed  with 
shield  and  bow,  in  honor  of  the  goddess  of  war  and 
love,  gave  rise  to  the  myths  which  saw  in  them  a 
nation  of  woman  warriors."*  According  to  Greek 
traditions,  not  only  Ephesus,  but  Smyrna  and  sev- 
eral more  cities  along  the  Ionian  coast-land,  were 
founded  by  Amazons.  This  in  every  instance  points 
to  the  Hittite  origin  of  tlie  cities,  as  indicated  by 
the  most  characteristic  feature  of  the  Hittite  re- 
ligion, which  it  had  in  common  with  those  of  Canaan 
and    the    Assyro-Babylonians.       The    Greeks,    who 


*  A.  H.  Sayce's  **  Herodotus,"  p.  430. 


3 66  THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS YklA . 

always  willingly  adapted  foreign  ideas  to  their  own, 
retained  the  worship  of  the  Hittite  goddess  at 
Ephesus,  but  gave  her  a  Greek  name  Her 
sanctuary  became  one  of  the  most  popular  and  re- 
nowned holy  places  in  the  Greek  world  ;  her  temple 
was  so  lavishly  endowed  by  Greek  wealth  and 
adorned  by  Greek  art  as  to  be  proclaimed  one  of 
the  wonders  of  the  world.  Yet  neither  goddess 
nor  worship  were  ever  quite  divested  of  certain 
Asiatic  peculiarities  and  a  certain  barbaric  splen- 
dor, foreign  to  the  usual  chaste  refinement  and 
moderation  of  Greek  thought  and  taste. 

1 8.  Ephesus,  Smyrna,  and  several  other  of  the 
more  important  Greek-Ionian  cities,  were  scattered 
along  the  coast-land  of  a  country  which  became  very 
famous  under  the  name  of  Lydia,  at  the  mouths  of 
its  finest  rivers.  When  Greek  emigrants,  driven 
from  home  by  political  feuds,  began  to  settle 
in  the  choicest  valleys  of  this  beautiful  littoral, 
as  early  as  about  looo  B.C.,  they  encountered  but 
feeble  opposition  from  the  population  whom  they 
found  in  possession,  foi  the  L)'dians,  a  people  prin- 
cipally of  Hittite  race,  though  brave,  were  rather 
effeminate  and  of  careless  habits.  They  had  long 
been  governed  by  kings,  but  no  trustworthy  in- 
formation about  them  is  attainable  until  some  three 
centuries  later.  There  are  indeed  traditions  of  two 
dynasties,  with  long  lists  ot  sovereigns,  but  they 
are  of  as  mythical  a  nature  as  the  early  dynasties 
of  Berosus,  being  represented  as  of  divine  origin, 
i.  e.y  directly  descended  from  the  Lydians'  supreme 
god   Manes  and    his  son  Attys»     The   latter  was 


THE  GA  THE  RING  OF  THE  STORM. 


367 


clearly  the  "  mild  sun-god,"  very  much  the  coun- 
terpart of  the  Adonis-Tammuz  of  Babylon  and 
Canaan.  He,  too,  was  young  and  fair,  and  met  a 
tragic  end,  according  to  some  versions,  from  a  wild 
boar's  tusk.  He  also  was  loved  by  the  nature- 
goddess  (here  called  Kybele),  who,  frantic  with 
grief  at  having  lost  him,  roamed  through  the  world 
shouting  and  weeping,  in  search  of  him.  The  fes- 
tival of  Attys,  like  that  of  Adonis-Tammuz,  came 
round  at  the  opening  of  spring,  lasted  three  days, 
and  was  of  decidedly  orgiastic  character."^  It  was 
introduced,  together  with  the  names  of  the  three 
deities  (and  popular  tradition  preserved  a  distinct 
recollection  of  the  fact),  from  Phrygia,  the  country 
bordering  on  Lydia  from  the  East,  where  the  Hittite 
emigrants  would  naturally  have  stopped  first  on 
their  way  to  the  sea.  But  the  name  Phrygia  must 
have  been  of  later  date,  as  it  is  not  of  Hittite  origin. 
19.  Taken  in  a  broad  and  general  way,  it  de- 
notes the  Aryan  population  which,  at  some  time, 
gradually  overspread  the  peninsular  region,  bounded 
on  the  east  by  the  mountains  of  Armenia  and 
known  as  Asia  Minor,  and  it  supplanted  the  earlier 
Hittite  rule.  The  Phrygians,  in  this  comprehen- 
sive sense,  were  themselves  a  branch  of  that  great 
and  mighty  Aryan  stock  whom  we  have  learned  to 
know  as  the  settlers  of  Thrace  (see  p.  361),  and  a 
part  of  whom  for  a  long  time  continued  to  call 
themselves  Bhryges  (their  local  way  of  pronounc- 


*  See  pp.   130-132,  141,   142;  and  "Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  323- 
326. 


368 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


ing  '' Phryges").  So  universally  recognized  is 
the  kinship  between  the  nations  on  both  sides  of  the 
Bosphorus  and  Hellespont,  that  they  are  often 
distinguished  from  each  other  only  by  the  name 
of  ''  European  Thracians  "  and  "Asiatic  Thracians," 
or  as  frequently  enclosed  in  the  sweeping  designa- 
tion of  "the  Phrygo-Thracian  or  Thraco-Phrygian 
family  of  nations."  Contrary  to  precedents,  their 
migration  appears  to  have  taken  place  in  the  di- 
rection from  west  to  east,  from  across  the  Bos- 
phorus to  the  Armenian  Mountains.  This  is  one 
of  a  very  few  exceptional  cases  in  history  of  a 
partial  deviation  from  a  great  rule.  In  their  prog- 
ress they  of  course  broke  up  into  several  nations ; 
but  Phrygia,  from  its  name,  appears  to  have  been 
the  headquarters  of  the  original  stock.  It  was 
this  branch  of  Aryans  which  eventually  filled  all 
the  highlands  of  Nairi,  pushed  through  to  the  two 
lakes,  entirely  ousted  and  supplanted  the  Alarodi- 
ans  of  Urartu  and  the  neighboring  mountain-coun- 
tries, and  became  the  ancestors  of  the  Armenian 
nation,  which,  mixed  with  later  Eranian  elements, 
is  firmly  established  there  to  this  day.  At  the 
point  of  history  we  have  reached,  the  Armenian 
division  of  the  Thraco-Phrygian  race  had  as  yet  ar- 
rived no  further  than  the  western  outskirts  of  the 
Armenian  range,  where  they  had  formed  a  small 
but  warlike  and  enterprising  pioneering  people. 
It  is  this  to  which  Chapter  x.  of  Genesis  refers  in 
the  Japhetic  family  as  ToGARMAH,  son  of  Gomer, 
and  to  which  the  Hebrew  prophets  repeatedly  refer 
as  Beth-TogarmaJi — "the  House  of  Togarmah." 


THE  GA  THERING  OE  THE  STORM. 


369 


20.  It  is  highly  improbable  that  the  ancient 
Hebrews  should  have  had  any  knowledge  of  the 
Cimmerians  who  dwelt  north  of  the  Black  Sea, 
Late  researches  make  it  more  and  more  probable 
that  when  they  speak  of  Gomer  and  his  sons  they 
mean  the  Thraco- Phrygian  nations  south  of  that 
sea,  to  which  those  Cimmerians  also  belonged,  al- 
though, when  they  crossed  the  Bosphorus,  flying  be- 
fore the  Scythians,  they  came  among  them  not  in 
the  guise  of  kinsmen,  but  of  barbarians  overrun- 
ning and  devastating  highly  civilized  countries. 
In  the  absence  of  monumental  evidence,  we  are 
fortunate  in  having  a  nearly  approximative  date 
for  this  invasion,  secured  for  us  by  an  event  con- 
nected with  it.  About  750  B.C.  the  Cimmerians 
destroyed  the  Greek  colony  of  SiNOPE,  founded 
a  short  time  before  on  the  Black  Sea,  in  a  country 
which  was  later  well  known  under  the  name  of 
Paphlagonia.  So  they  must  have  crossed  the 
Bosphorus,  at  all  events,  several  years  before. 
They  then  began  a  system  of  raids  which  carried 
them  all  over  Asia  Minor,  where  they  maintained 
a  sort  of  desultory  rule,  terrifying  and  plundering 
the  rural  populations,  every  now  and  then  seizing 
on  and  sacking  cities,  for  over  a  hundred  years. 
Lydia  and  the  Ionian  coast-land  were  not  spared  ; 
they  threatened  to  invade  the  Assyrian  Empire  it- 
self, under  an  adventurous  chief,  Tiushpa,  who  was 
repulsed  by  Esarhaddon,  probably  somewhere  in 
the  mountains  of  Cappadocia,  as  we  have  seen. 
(See  p.  338.)  We  shall  hear  more  of  them,  as  well 
as  of  their  pursuers,  the  Scythians. 
24 


370 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


Well  might  the  prophet  say  :  "  I  see  a  seething 
caldron  ;  and  the  face  thereof  is  from  the  north. 
.  .  .  Out  of  the  north  evil  shall  break  upon  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  land.  For,  lo !  I  will  call  all  the 
families  of  the  kingdoms  of  the  north,  saith  the 
Lord"  (Jeremiah  i.  13-15). 


XII. 

THE  DECLINE   OF     ASSHUR. — ASSHURBANIPAL      (AS- 

SHUR-BANI-HABAL). 

I.  When  Asshurbanipal  assumed,  undivided,  the 
honors  and  labors  which  he  had  of  late  years  shared 
with   his   father,  no   one,  and  he   least   of 

Asshurbani- 

all,  could  have  imagined  that  the  empire  paL  668-626 
was  within  half  a  century — one  lifetime — 
of  utter  destruction.  Nothing  could  be  outwardly 
more  prosperous  than  the  beginning  of  the  new 
reign,  and  the  young  king  complacently  records 
that  ^'when  the  great  gods  firmly  seated  him  on  his 
father's  throne,  Raman  poured  down  his  rain,  the 
seed  bore  five-fold,  the  surplus  grain  was  two-thirds, 
the  cattle  were  good  in  multiplying,  in  his  seasons 
there  was  plenty,  in  his  years  famine  was  ended." 
Upon  his  monuments  he  could,  not  untruthfully, 
report  a  long  series  of  triumphs  and  victories,  and 
his  reign  was,  in  one  respect,  even  more  brilliant  than 
those  of  his  predecessors :  it  was  a  golden  time  for 
literature.  For  the  king  was  of  an  intellectual  turn 
of  mind,  indeed  was  something  of  what  would  be 
called  in  our  day  a  collecting  bookworm,  and  in 
the  usual  self-exalting  opening  paragraph  of  one  of 
his  cylinders  he  particularly  rejoices  that  the  great 
gods  have  given  him  "  attentive  ears,"  and  have  in- 

371     . 


::;^:^^^..:i,' 


::^il^::;,lT:.:■ 


T        S'!  ;i;.|i,.T.v:  ■ 


•■•;iK  i":;ri'' ,»%'!(;!  i!;;i:;n-;;;:;:':;H!!i;!!;-:iiiiv,///^^^^  4^ 

n  feiiiiiliia  i»^ 


1  TJ^^v'^^  ,..::^V;|;l;i;jUi;,|>^  5 

«-' .    --='*-'w  -A  .'    ,-;Jr*  ..!(  ';:■■    mLi 


H•!!i•■!!;;ill^i!!;;■;:il';:';i;i;;!iiMiijl!!ii^^^ 


1^^ 


Bouz-^om  i.ei^ 


lirn) .  Cii.  C:iarti.oii 

69. — ASSHURBANIPAL    IM    HIS   CHARIOT. 


J.Sa2£\«  xa 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


171 


clined  his  mind  to  the  study  of  "  all  inscribed  tab- 
lets." Assyrian  art,  too,  attained  its  highest  finish  in 
his  day ;  he  was  a  builder,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
a  passionate  lion-hunter,  and  kept  a  harem  which 
must  have  equalled  that  of  King  Solomon  in  variety 
and  splendor,  for  we  read  that  all  the  kings  who 
owned  his  rule  and  offered  presents  in  token  of 
either  submission  or  friendship,  sent  with  their  gifts 
the  noblest  ladies  of  their  families,  generally  their 
own  daughters  and  those  of  their  brothers.  With 
such  tastes  it  is  not  likely  that  he  should  have  led 
the  life  of  those  veteran  campaigners,  Shalmane- 
ser  II.  or  Tiglath-Pileser  II.  Many  of  his  wars  were 
undoubtedly  conducted  by  his  generals,  but  it  is 
difificult  to  make  out  which,  from  the  habit  of  the 
Assyrian  kings  of  speaking  in  the  first  person  and 
taking  all  the  credit  to  themselves. 

2.  We  have  seen  that  the  death  of  a  king  was  in- 
variably the  signal  for  revolts  and  coalitions.  The 
rising  which  claimed  Asshurbanipal's  attention  in  his 
very  first  year  was  that  of  Taharka,  the  dethroned 
Ethiopian,  who  undertook  to  dispossess  the  princes 
set  over  the  different  districts  of  Egypt  by  Esarhad- 
don,  and  actually  established  himself  in  Memphis 
before  an  Assyrian  army  could  be  sent  down  to 
oppose  him.  Asshurbanipal,  however,  was  not  slow 
in  his  descent,  and  when  he  did  arrive,  having  se- 
cured his  rear  by  commanding  and  receiving  the 
personal  homage  of  ''  the  twenty-two  kings  of  the 
sea-side  and  the  middle  of  the  sea,"  he  defeated  in 
a  pitched  battle  the  army  sent  against  him  by  Ta- 
harka, who  thereupon   hastily  fled   further  south,  to 


374 


THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS YRTA . 


Thebes,  then  all  the  way  to  his  own  land  of  Kush, 
abandoning  both  capitals  to  the  invaders.  The  vic- 
tor stayed  in  Egypt  just  long  enough  to  restore  to 
their  seats  the  twenty  vassal  kings  who  had,  as  of 
one  accord,  fled  into  the  desert  before  the  advance 
of  Taharka,  and  to  "  strengthen  the  bonds  more 
than  in  former  days,"  then,  "  with  abundant  plunder 
and  much  spoil,  in  peace  returned  to  Nineveh." 

3.  Very  galling  those  bonds  must  have  been, 
for  scarcely  had  the  Assyrian  departed  when  plot- 
ting began  again.  Asshurbanipal,  who  loves  to  rep- 
resent himself  as  a  benevolent  sovereign,  a  doer  of 
good  and  a  ''  forgiver  of  wTongs,"  whose  kind  heart 
is  always  pained  by  ingratitude,  complains  that 
'*  the  good  I  did  to  them  they  despised,  and  their 
hearts  devised  evil.  Seditious  words  they  spoke, 
and  evil  counsel  they  counselled  among  themselves." 
They  recalled  Taharka,  promising  to  acknowl- 
edge "  no  other  lord."  But  their  messengers  and 
despatches  were  intercepted  by  the  Assyrian  gener- 
als, who  captured  several  of  them,  and  sent  them 
in  chains  to  Nineveh.  This  swift  and  summary 
measure  did  not  prevent  the  outbreak.  Risings 
and  massacres  took  place  in  several  great  cities, 
though  with  disastrous  results  for  the  Egyptians. 
Yet,  when  the  captive  kings  arrived  in  Nineveh, 
Asshurbanipal  thought  it  best  to  try  a  conciliating 
policy  and  forgave  their  offence.  Necho,  especially, 
the  prince  of  Sais,  w^ho  by  his  birth,  ambition  and 
cleverness,  took  the  lead  among  the  rest,  he  treated 
with  marked  favor.  He  not  only  set  him  at  liberty, 
but  clothed  him  in  a  costly  robe    of   honor,   decked 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


375 


him  with  ornaments  of  gold,  placed  golden  rings  on 
his  feet,  girt  him  with  a  sword  of  honor  in  its  sheath 
of  gold,  and  thus  equipped,  and  well  provided  with 
chariots,  horses  and  mules,  sent  him  back  to  his  king- 
dom of  Sais,  which  had  been  appointed  him  by  Esar- 
haddon.  True,  he  "  made  the  observances  stronger 
than  before,"  and  sent  "  his  generals  with  him  as 
governors."  This  unusual  leniency  was  soon  proved 
to  be  sound  statesmanship,  for  the  vassal  princes 
did  not  favor  the  next  move  of  the  Ethiopian 
monarch.  Taharka,  indeed,  about  this  time  "  went 
to  his  place  of  night,"  i.  e.,  died.  But  his  successor 
— some  say  his  nephew,  some  his  step-son — at  first 
showed  much  energy:  fortified  himself  in  Thebes, 
then  marching  upon  Memphis,  which  was  occupied 
by  an  Assyrian  garrison,  ''  besieged  and  took  the 
whole  of  them."  The  news  of  this  disaster,  being 
carried  to  Nineveh  by  a  swift  messenger,  brought 
down  retribution,  quick  and  sure,  in  the  shape  of 
a  large  Assyrian  force.  Their  approach  seems  to 
have  created  even  more  than  the  usual  panic,  for 
the  Ethiopian  not  only  fled  for  his  life  from  Mem- 
phis to  Thebes  as  soon  as  he  heard  .that  the  enemy 
had  crossed  the  border,  but,  finding  that  he  was 
closely  followed,  gave  up  the  struggle  for  good  and 
all  and  retreated  into  Ethiopia,  where  he  died  soon 
after.  This  was  the  inglorious  end  of  the  Ethiop- 
ian dynasty. 

4.  Though  quelled  with  so  little  trouble,  the  ill- 
fated  attempt  was  punished  this  time  with  the  ut- 
most severity.  The  treatment  of  Thebes,  the  sacred 
city,  the  repository  of  untold  treasures  of  art  and 


> 

< 
C 

«} 

en 
O 

Pi 
U 

< 

Oh 

< 

P5 

D 

W 
c« 


O 


376 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


nl 


wealth,  was  almost  similar  to  that  inflicted  on 
Babylon  by  Sennacherib,  and  the  report  of  it  carried 
terror  through  the  world.  "  That  city,  the  whole  of 
it,  in  the  service  of  Asshur  and  Ishtar,  my  hands 
took,"  the  victor  sweepingly  reports ;  ''  spoils  un- 
numbered I  carried  off  ;  "  the  most  conspicuous 
objects  were  "  two  lofty  obelisks,  with  beautiful 
carving,  set  up  before  the  gate  of  a  temple." 
About  five  years  had  elapsed  since  the  first  rising 
of  Taharka,  and  for  the  next  ten  years  the  Assyr- 
ian rule  was  undisturbed  in  Egypt. 

5.  The  cities  of  the  sea-coast,  too,  were  not  very 
troublesome  during  this  period,  with  the  exception 
of  a  renewal  of  hostilities  on  the  part  of  the  king  of 
Tyre,  who,  however,  was  reduced  to  obedience  by 
a  blockade  so  severe  that  the  people  of  Tyre  had 
been  forced  to  drink  sea-water.  He  sent  his  son 
to  tender  his  submission  ;  also  his  daughter  and  the 
daughters  of  his  brothers  for  the  royal  harem,  with 
great  dowries.  The  king  of  Arvad,  who  had  been 
implicated  in  the  same  revolt,  came  to  Nineveh  him- 
self, bringing  his  daughter  and  many  gifts.  And 
when  he,  shortly  after,  died,  his  ten  sons  ^' arose 
from  the  midst  of  the  sea,  and  with  their  numerous 
presents "  came  to  kiss  the  royal  feet  and  submit 
their  claims  to  the  royal  pleasure.  Asshurbanipal 
appointed  one  of  them  to  the  kingdom  of  Arvad, 
and  dismissed  the  others  with  gifts  and  marks  of 
honor.  Several  other  kings  took  the  same  means 
of  securing  his  favor  in  this,  the  early  and  prosper- 
ous portion  of  his  reign  ;  but  the  most  curious  inci- 


378 


The  story  of  Assyria, 


dent  of  the    sort  is   the   episode   with   the   king  of 
Lydia. 

6.  One  day  there  came  to  the  frontier  of  the 
Assyrian  Empire,  somewhere  in  the  North-west, 
men  of  unfamiHar  tongue  and  garb,  who  demanded 
admittance,  showing  themselves  to  be  friendly. 
"Who  art  thou,  brother?"  asked  the  Assyrian 
guards  of  their  chief ;  "  of  what  place  ?  "  But  he  did 
not  understand,  and  so  they  took  him  to  Nineveh 
and  brought  him  before  the  king.  Here  he  was  tried 
with  "  the  languages  of  the  rising  sun  and  of  the 
setting  sun,"  but  a  master  of  his  language  there  was 
not,  his  tongue  they  could  not  understand.  Un- 
fortunately, the  fragment  which  relates  this  amusing 
occurrence  is  very  imperfect  and  breaks  off  abruptly  ; 
so  we  do  not  learn  in  what  way  a  mutual  under- 
standing was  at  last  arrived  at.  Finally,  however, 
the  foreigner  proved  to  be  an  envoy  from  Gyges, 
king  of  Lydia  (Assyrian  :  GUGU,  KiNG  OF  LuDi), 
which  Asshurbanipal  calls  "a  district  where  they 
cross  the  sea,"^  a  remote  place,  of  which  the  kings 
my  fathers  had  not  heard  speak  the  name."  This 
Gugu  or  Gyges,  the  founder  of  a  new  dynasty  and 
the  first  historically  authentic  king  of  Lydia,  of 
which  he  had  possessed  himself  by  a  bold  usurpa- 
tion, was  sorely  distressed  by  the  Cimmerians,  who, 
descending  from  their  first  stations  along  the  south- 
ern shore  of  the  Black  Sea,  were  overrunning  the 
whole  of  Asia  Minor  (see  p.  369),   and  who  made 


*  F.    Lenormant  prefers  this    rendering   to    that  of   Geo.   Smith, 
''  a  district  beyond  the  sea." 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSIIUR,  ^^g 

themselves  the  more  obnoxious  because  they  did 
not  make  any  regular  conquests  or  settle  anywhere, 
but  went  about  robbing  and  plundering  the  coun- 
tries, storming  and  sacking  cities,  in  true  nomadic 
fashion.  In  his  great  need,  and,  perhaps,  encouraged 
by  the  report  of  Esarhaddon's  victory  over  the 
Cimmerian  chief  Tiushpa  (see  p.  337),  Gyges  deter- 
mined on  the  very  reckless  step  of  entreating  the 
assistance  of  his  dangerous  and.  somewhat  remote 
neighbor. 

7.  This  request  which,  according  to  the  Assyrian 
code,  implied  submission,  not  alliance  as  among 
equals,  was,  very  politically,  presented  to  Asshurba- 
nipal  as  inspired  by  a  prophetic  dream.  This  is  his 
version  of  the  affair  : 

"The  greatness  of  my  mighty  royalty  was  related  to  him  in  a 
dream  by  Asshur,  the  god,  my  creator,  thus  :  '  The  yoke  of  Asshur- 
banipal,  king  of  Asshur,  take,  and  by  speaking  his  name,  capture 
thine  enemies.'  The  same  day  that  he  had  seen  the  dream,  he  sent  his 
messenger  to  pray  for  my  friendship.  That  dream,  which  he  had 
seen,  he  sent  me  by  the  hands  of  his  envoy,  and  he  repeated  it  to  me." 

In  what  manner  and  to  what  extent  the  required  as- 
sistance was  rendered,  we  are  not  told  ;  the  narra- 
tive merely  says  : 

"  From  the  day  when  he  took  the  yoke  of  my  royalty,  the  Gi- 
mirrai,  masters  of  the  people  of  his  land,  who  did  not  fear  my  fathers, 
and  as  for  me,  had  not  taken  the  yoke  of  my  royalty,  he  captured 
with  the  help  of  Asshur  and  Ishtar,  the  gods  my  lords.  From 
amidst  the  chiefs  of  the  Gimirrai  whom  he  had  captured,  two 
chiefs  in  strong  fetters  of  iron  and  bonds  of  iron  he  bound,  and  with 
numerous  presents,  he  caused  to  be  brought  to  my  presence." 

8.  The  "yoke  '*  which  the  Lydian  king  was  thus 
driven    voluntarily  to  take,  apparently  proved  no 


38o 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


light  one,  for  after  awhile — probably  several  years 
— he  ceased  to  send  messengers  with  presents,  "  to 
his  own  power  trusted  and  hardened  his  heart," 
and  sent  his  forces  to  the  aid  of  PSAMMETIK,  king 
of  Egypt,  who  had  thrown  off  the  Assyrian 
dominion.  This  was  the  son  of  Necho,  king  of 
Sais,  who  had  died  soon  after  the  sack  of  Thebes, 
and  about  the  same  time  as  the  last  Ethiopian 
king.  Psammetik  had  set  his  heart  on  achieving 
what  his  father  had  certainly  planned  :  the  resto- 
ration of  a  national  dynasty  in  Egypt,  and  deliver- 
ance of  the  country  both  from  the  foreign  rule  and 
the  tyranny  of  the  petty  princes  subservient  to  that 
rule.  Naturally,  he  looked  around  for  allies,  and 
Gyges  of  Lydia  w^as  one  of  the  first  whom  he  secured. 
The  way  in  which  Asshurbanipal  received  the  mes- 
sage is  characteristic  of  this  king,  who  seems  to  have 
been  even  more  habitually  religious  in  his  utter- 
ances and  practices  than  any  of  his  predecessors, 
and  much  given  to  direct  appeals  to  the  deity,  as 
well  as  to  the  consulting  of  oracles  and  seers.  "  I 
prayed  to  Asshur  and  Ishtar,"  he  says,  ''thus:  Be- 
fore his  enemies  his  corpse  may  they  cast ;  may  they 
carry  captive  his  attendants."  His  prayer,  he 
further  informs  us,  was  heard  and  literally  fulfilled  : 
'°  Before  his  enemies  his  corpse  (the  Lydian  king's) 
was  thrown  down,  and  they  carried  captive  his  at- 
tendants. The  Gimirrai,  w4iom  by  the  glory  of  my 
name  he  had  trodden  under  him,  conquered  and 
swept  the  whole  of  his  country."  We  may  con- 
clude from  this  that  Gyges  perished  in  the  struggle, 
but  we  are  left  to  guess  how  and  by  what  means  the 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHVR. 


381 


royal  curse  was  so  quickly  carried  out,  and  whether 
Asshurbanipal  himself  aided  the  consummation  by 
withdrawing  his  assistance,  or  even  by  giving  the 
Cimmerians  a  hint  that  they  should  not  find  his 
armies  in  their  way.  He  must  have  been  in  some 
way  concerned  in  the  disasters  which  befell  the  land 
of  Lydia  after  its  defection,  for  we  are  told  that 
Gyges'  son  and  successor,  Ardys,  thought  it  best  to 
return  to  his  allegiance. 

'*  After  him  (Gugu)  his  son  sat  on  the  throne.  That  evil  work  by 
which,  at  the  lifting  up  of  my  hands,  the  gods  my  protectors  had 
brought  destruction  on  his  father,  by  the  hands  of  his  envoy  he  sent 
me  the  tidings  of  it,  and  took  the  yoke  of  my  dominion,  thus  :  "  The 
king  whom  god  has  blessed  art  thou ;  my  father  from  thee  departed, 
and  evil  was  done  in  his  time  ;  I  am  thy  devoted  servant,  and  my 
people  all  perform  thy  pleasure." 

9.  Asshurbanipal's  cylinder  annals  have  the  pecul- 
iarity that  they  do  not  give  the  events  under  the 
respective  regnal  years,  but  dispose  them  into 
groups,  give  a  connected  narrative  of  each,  and, 
having  finished  with  one,  pass  on  to  another."^  This 
makes  his  inscriptions  much  more  attractive  reading 
from  a  literary  point  of  view,  but  leaves  the  chrono- 
logical sequence  very  uncertain.  It  is  seldom  pos- 
sible to  find  out  a  date  in  this  reign,  unless  from 
coincidence  with  dates  well-established  from  other 
sources.  This  incident  with  Lydia  we  can  locate 
pretty  accurately,  because  we  happen  to  know  that 

*  As  to.  the  annotated  Eponym  Canon,  the  fragments  of  it  which 
have  been  discovered  do  not  bring  us  down  quite  to  722,  the  year  of 
the  taking  of  Samaria.  The  portions  of  the  plain  list  of  limmu  which 
were  recovered  also  break  off  in  the  first  years  of  Asshurbani]^al. 


382  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

Gyges  did  In  654,  or  perhaps  653  B.C.  The  first 
Lydian  embassy  probably  took  place  towards  the 
end  of  the  Egyptian  campaign,  in  665  or  664  B.C. 

10.  Although  Asshurbanipal  never  refers  to  the 
GimirraT  again,  it  is  not  at  all  impossible  that  they 
should  have  been  a  vexation  to  his  Western  borders 
all  through  his  reign.  One  thing  is  sure  :  although 
he  complacently  accepted  the  submission  of  Ardys 
he  was  not  able  to  help  him  much.  For  it  was  dur- 
ing the  rule  of  this  king,  who  reigned  in  Lydia  36 
years  and  survived  Asshurbanipal  several  years,  that 
Lydia  suffered  most  from  the  Cimmerians,  who  at 
one  time  took  and  sacked  the  capital,  Sardis,  itself, 
all  but  the  citadel,  which  was  too  strong  for  such 
primitive  tactics  as  theirs,  and  where  the  king  held 
out  until  they  were  driven  out  of  the  city,  or  left  it 
of  their  own  accord  to  seek  other  plunder.  The 
times  of  aggression  and  foreign  conquest  had  gone 
by  for  Assyria.  She  was,  instead,  threatened  with 
invasion  on  several  sides,  and  wherever  the  danger 
was  most  imminent  thither  were  her  armies  di- 
rected. It  was  a  matter  of  necessity,  not  choice. 
And  however  troublesome  the  Cimmerians  may 
have  been,  there  was  just  then  a  point  which  claimed 
attention  far  more  pressingly, 

1 1.  This  was  the  lake  region  in  the  extreme  north- 
east of  the  empire.  The  Kingdom  of  Van,  it  is 
true,  remained  friendly,  but  the  neighboring  coun- 
tries east  and  south-east  of  it  made  some  decided 
hostile  moves,  backed  by  a  nation  remoter  still,  but 
which  represented  a  very  black  point  in  the  gather- 
ing general  storm-cloud.     This  nation,  designated  as 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


383 


Saki,  i.  e.,  Scythians,  was  occupying  that  belt  of 
highland  beyond  the  river  Araxes  (now  Aras), 
which,  watered  by  the  river  Kyros  (now  KOUR), 
stretches  along  the  foot  of  the  great  Caucasian 
ridge  between  the  Black  Sea  and  the  Caspian.  It 
was  an  offshoot  of  that  same  branch  of  the  Eranian 
stock  which  we  saw  pressing  upon  the  Cimmerians 
from  behind,  in  the  roll  of  the  great  tidal  wave  of 
migrations,  and  dislodging  them  from  their  wide 
lands  in  the  south  of  Russia.  (See  p.  361.)  In- 
deed, Herodotus,  probably  retailing  a  current  tradi- 
tion, asserts  that  this  division  of  Scythians  de- 
scended into  Asia  in  pursuit  of  the  Cimmerians, 
but  missed  the  way  and  accidentally  got  into  the 
highlands  of  the  Southern  Caucasus.  The  explana- 
tion is  scarcely  even  plausible;  but  the  fact  is  cer- 
tain, and  it  may  be  supposed  that  they  somehow 
stumbled  on  the  defile  or  pass  known  in  antiquity 
as  the  "  Caucasian  Gates,"  as  that  is  the  only 
point  where  a  descent  would  be  possible  through 
such  a  broad,  rugged  and  altogether  impracticable 
mountain  barrier  as  the  Caucasus.  Their  name  re- 
mained to  the  region  in  which  they  settled  ;  it  is 
given  on  maps  of  the  ancient  world  as  Sacasene. 
To  the  Hebrews  of  that  and  later  periods  it  was 
known  as  Magog,  and  it  was  not  one  of  the  least 
surprises  we  owe  to  Assyriology  to  find  that  the 
"  Gog,  King  of  Magog,"  of  Ezekiel  (chapters 
xxxviii.  and  xxxix.),  was  originally  a  real  and  his- 
torical person,  no  other  in  fact  than  the  chief  of 
the  Scythians  in  Asshurbanipal's  time,  probably  a 
warrior    sufficiently  renowned  to  have  survived    as 


384  ^-^^  -5- TOR  Y  OF  ASS YRTA . 

a  by-word  of  terror  in  the  memory  of  later  genera- 
tions. 

12.  This  name  of  Gog  occurs  on  one  of  Asshur- 
banipal's  cylinders  under  the  form  of  Gagi.  In 
describing  the  campaign  in  the  north-east, — en- 
tirely successful  and  highly  satisfactory  in  the  way 
of  tribute  and  booty,^ — the  king  concludes  by 
recording  that  he, — or  more  probably  his  general, — 
captured  alive  and  brought  to  Nineveh  two  sons  of 
''Gagi,  a  chief  (or  'the  chief')  of  the  Saki,"  after 
taking  seventy-five  of  their  strong  cities,  because 
they  had  ''  thrown  off  the  yoke  of  his  dominion." 
This  last  expression,  even  if  it  implied  more  of  a 
boast  than  a  reality,  would  show  that  the  Scyth- 
ians of  Magog  had  dwelt  where  history  finds  them 
for  at  least  a  couple  of  generations,  and  had  be- 
come in  great  part  weaned  from  their  nomadic 
habits,  although  we  shall  find  the  following  genera- 
tion resuming  them  with  the  utmost  readiness 
when  tempted  to  do  so  by  the  prospect  of  un- 
bounded plunder. 

13.  We  now  come  to  the  great  features  of  this 
reign — the  wars  with  Elam  and  with  Babjdon  ;  a 
succession  of  events  of  such  magnitude  and  dra- 
matic interest,  told,  too,  with  a  literary  skill  so  for- 
eign to  the  monumental  composition  of  earlier  ages, 
that  the  rest  of  Asshurbanipal's  annals  read  like 
a  highly  flavored  romance. 

*  It  is  amusing  to  find  among  the  names  of  cities  captured  in 
this  expedition,  that  of  Urmeyate — modern  Urumieh,  or  Urmiah 
(lake  and  city), — as  an  instance  of  the  tenacity  with  which  names 
survive  through  ages. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


385 


Elam  had  been  for  some  time  on  unusually 
friendly  terms  with  Assyria.  At  Esarhaddon's 
death  the  throne  was  held  by  Urtaki,  the  second 
of  three  brothers,  who  all  reigned  in  turn.  About 
that  time  there  was  a  drought  and  famine  in  Elam, 
and  Asshurbanipal  showed,  for  a  wonder,  real 
kindness  and  generosity.  He  sent  down  trans- 
ports of  corn  from  his  own  royal  stores,  and  re- 
ceived a  number  of  the  Elamite's  subjects,  who 
"■  fled  from  the  face  of  the  drought  and  dwelt  in 
Assyria  until  rains  fell  in  his  country  and  there 
were  crops,"  when  they  were  sent  back  free  and 
unharmed.  Such  treatment  was  certainly  very 
neighborly,  and  the  Assyrian  monarch  had  for  once 
good  reason  to  complain  of  ingratitude  when 
Urtaki,  with  several  tribes  of  the  coast  and 
marshes,  suddenly  invaded  Accad.  The  whole  of 
the  southern  country  was  governed  by  Asshur- 
banipal's  younger  brother,  ShamasH-Shumuktn, 
whom  Esarhaddon  had  installed  as  viceroy  at 
Babylon.  He  sent  at  once  to  Nineveh,  to  implore 
his  brother's  assistance.  So  rapid  was  the  inva- 
sion that  when  the  messenger  sent  down  to  exam- 
ine into  the  state  of  affairs  returned  to  Nineveh, 
he  reported  as  follows:  "The  Elamite,  like  a  flight 
of  locusts  overspreading  Accad,  is  encamped  over 
against  Babylon  ;  his  camp  is  fixed  and  fortified." 
An  Assyrian  army  quickly  raised  the  siege  and 
Urtaki  was  driven  back  into  his  country  ;  for,  says 
the  king,  the  gods  *'  delivered  judgment  against 
him,  who,  when  I  did  not  make  war  with  him,  made 
war   with    me."      That     same    year    Urtaki     died. 

25 


386 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


From  some  lines,  rather  obscure,  and  with  the  ends 
broken  off,  it  almost  seems  as  if  he  committed 
suicide.  At  all  events,  ''  the  time  of  his  kingdom 
ended,  and  the  dominion  of  Elam  passed  to  an- 
other." 

14.  Not  to  any  of  his  sons,  but  to  his  younger 
brother,  Teumman  ;  most  probably  by  violence 
and  against  the  law  of  inheritance,  for  this  prince 
appears  to  have  been  familiar  with  crime  in  its 
blackest  form.  "  Teumman,  like  an  evil  spirit, 
sat  on  the  throne  of  Urtaki,"  is  the  vis^orous  ex- 
pression  in  the  text.  His  first  move  was  to  at- 
tempt the  murder  of  his  five  nephews,  sons  of  the 
two  preceding  kings,  who  however,  got  timely 
warning  and  fled  to  Assyria  with  sixty  more  of 
their  family,  and  a  great  retinue,  partly  of  expert 
bowmen.  Asshurbanipal  granted  them  his  pro- 
tection and  when  Teumman  sent  two  of  "his  ereat 
men "  to  demand  their  surrender,  indignantly  re- 
fused;  "the  demand  of  his  vile  mouth  I  did  not 
accede  to.  I  did  not  give  him  those  fugitives." 
This  refusal,  of  course,  amounted  to  a  declaration 
of  war,  and  Teumman  was  already  preparing  his 
forces  when  he  made  the  request.  The  emergency 
was  a  serious  one,  and  so  Asshurbanipal  consid- 
ered it,  even  though  confident  of  victory  in  conse- 
quence of  omens  which  were  interpreted  as  bod- 
ing evil  to  Elam.  But  his  greatest  reliance  he 
placed  on  the  goddess  Ishtar  of  Arbela,  his  and 
his  father's  especial  patroness.  (See  p.  333.)  Be- 
fore setting  out  for  this  momentous  campaign, 
which  he  was  to  command   in  person,  he  went  to 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


38; 


Arbela  to  sacrifice  and  entreat  for  a  message  or  a 
sign.  What  befel  there  is  related  in  a  page  of 
such  high  poetical  beauty  that  it  stands  entirely 
alone  in  what  we  possess  of  Assyrian  literature, 
only  matched,  in  another  line,  by  the  description  of 
the  battle  of  Khaluli.  (See  p.  318.)  Like  that 
classical  piece,  therefore,  we  shall  give  this  episode 
unabridged  :  ^ 

15.  **  In  the  month  of  Ab  (July),  ...  in  the  festival  of  the  great 
Queen  (Ishtar)  ....  I  was  staying  at  Arbela,  the  city  the  delight  of 
her  heart,  to  be  present  at  her  high  worship.  There  they  brought 
me  news  of  the  invasion  of  the  Elamite,  who  was  coming  against  the 
will  of  the  gods.  Thus:  '  Teumman  has  said  solemnly  ...  "I 
will  not  pour  out  another  drink-offering  until  I  shall  have  gone  and 
fought  with  him."  ' 

''  Concerning  this  threat  which  Teumman  had  spoken,  I  praved  to 
the  great  Ishtar.  I  approached  to  her  presence,  I  bowed  down  at 
her  feet,  I  besought  her  divinity  to  come  and  to  save  me.  Thus : 
*  O  goddess  of  Arbela,  I  am  Asshurbanipal.  king  of  Asshur,  the  crea- 
ture of  thy  hands,  [chosen  by  thee  and  ?]  thy  father  (Asshur)  to  restore 
the  temples  of  Assyria  and  to  adorn  the  holy  cities  of  Accad.  I  have 
sought  to  honor  thee,  and  I  have  gone  to  worship  thee.*  ....  *  O 
thou  queen  of  queens,  goddess  of  war,  lady  of  battles.  Queen  of  the 
gods,  who  in  the  presence  of  Asshur  thy  father  speakest  always  in 
my  favor,  causing  the  hearts  of  Asshur  and  Marduk  to  love  me.  ... 
Lo !  now,  Teumman,  king  of  Elam.  who  has  sinned  against  Asshur 
thy  father,  and  Marduk  thy  brother,  while  I,  Asshurbanipal,  have 
been  rejoicing  their  hearts, — he  has  collected  his  soldiers,  amassed 
his  army,  and  has  drawn  his  sword  to  invade  Assyria.  O  thou 
archer  of  the  gods,  come  like  a  ....  in  the  midst  of  the  battle, 
destroy  him  and  crush  him  with  a  fiery  bolt  from  heaven  I' 

"  Ishtar  heard  my  prayer.  '  Fear  not ! '  she  replied,  and  caused  my 
heart  to  rejoice.  '  At  the  lifting  up  of  thy  hands,  thine  eyes  shall  be 
satisfied  with  the  judgment.     I  will  grant  thee  favor.' 

*  The  translation  is  that  of  Mr.  Fox  Talbot,  in  ''  Records  of  the 
Past,"  (Vol.  VII.,  pp.  67,  68),  with  here  and  there  a  trifling  altera- 
tion after  George  Smith, 


388 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


"  In  the  night-time  of  that  night  in  which  I  had  prayed  to  her,  a 
certain  seer  lay  down  and  had  a  dream.  In  the  middle  of  the  night 
Ishtar  appeared  to  him  and  he  related  the  vision  to  me  thus  : 

** '  Ishtar  who  dwells  in  Arbela  came  unto  me  begirt  right  and  left 
with  flames,  holding  her  bow  in  her  hand,  and  riding  in  her  open 
chariot  as  if  going  to  battle.  And  thou  didst  stand  before  her.  She 
addressed  thee  as  a  mother  would  her  child.  She  smiled  upon  thee, 
she,  Ishtar,  the  highest  of  the  gods,  and  gave  thee  a  command. 
Thus: — Take  [this  bow]  she  said,  to  go  to  battle  with!  Wherever 
thy  camp  shall  stand,  I  will  come  to  it. — Then  thou  didst  say  to  her. 
thus : — O  Queen  of  the  goddesses,  wherever  thou  goest,  let  me  go 
with  thee ! — Then  she  made  answer  to  thee,  thus : — I  will  protect 
thee !  And  I  will  march  with  thee  at  the  time  of  the  feast  of  Nebo. 
Meanwhile  eat  food,  drink  wine,  make  music,  and  glorify  my  divin- 
ity, until  I  shall  come  and  this  vision  shall  be  fulfilled  '  {Hencefor- 
ward the  seer  appears  to  speak  in  his  owti  person )  : 

'"Thy  heart's  desire  shall  be  accomplished.  Thy  face  shall  not 
grow  pale  with  fear.  Thy  feet  shall  not  be  arrested  :  thou  shalt  not 
even  scratch  thy  skin  in  the  battle.  In  her  benevolence  she  defends 
thee,  and  she  is  wroth  with  all  thy  foes.  Before  her  a  fire  is  blown 
fiercely  to  destroy  thy  enemies.'  "  * 

i6.  Never  was  omen  more  brilliantly  fulfilled. 
Asshurbanipal  met  Teumman  on  the  banks  of  the 
Ulai  (the  classical  EULAEUS)  where  he  had  forti- 
fied himself,  in  order  to  close  the  approach  to  his 
capital,  Shushan,  on  this  the  least  protected  side, 
and  utterly  defeated  him.  The  river  was  "choked 
with  corpses."  Teumman  himself,  being  wounded, 
yielded  to  the  urging  of  his  son,  who  said  to  him, 
''  The  battle  do  not  continue,"  and  together  they 
fled    into    the   woods.      But    their   chariot    having 


*  How  strangely  close  in  general  outline  is  the  parallel  between 
this  incident  of  the  vision  and  that  of  Hezekiah  spreading  Sennach- 
erib's letter  of  defiance  before  the  Lord,  and  praying  loudly  for  help, 
then  the  prophet  comforting  him  and  saying  to  him  in  the  name  of 
Yahveh,  "  I  have  heard  thee  '  "     (See  p.  309. ) 


< 

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t/2 


389 


390 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


broken  down,  they  were  soon  reached  by  the  As- 
syrians who  were  in  pursuit,  and  after  a  brief  stand 
they  were  both  thrown  down  and  beheaded.  The 
fugitive  princes  were  among  the  pursuers  and  the 
report  spread  that  one  of  them,  Tammaritu, 
Urtaki's  youngest  son,  cut  off  his  uncle's  head  with 
his  own  hand.  The  somewhat  meagre  narrative 
given  by  the  cyHnders  is  amply  compensated  by 
the  sculptures  in  Asshurbanipal's  palace,  which  rep- 
resent the  successive  scenes  of  this  war  in  its  small- 
est details,  with  short  inscriptions  above  the  prin- 
cipal groups,  telling  exactly  what  the  actors  are 
doing  or  even  saying.  Thus  over  the  figure  of  a 
wounded  man  surrendering  himself,  there  is  this  ■ 
inscription  :  "  Urtakii,  tJie  relative  of  Teiumnan,  zvJio 
ivas  woundeei  by  an  arrow,  regarded  not  his  life.  To 
cut  off  his  oivn  head  he  bade  the  son  of  Asshnr,  thus  : 
'  /  surrender.  My  head  cut  off.  Before  the  king  thy 
lord  set  it ;  may  he  take  it  for  a  good  omen!  " 
Want  of  space  forbids  our  setting  before  our  read- 
ers more  than  one  specimen  of  these  battle-scenes ; 
but  it  is  a  very  complete  one  ;  a  careful  perusal  of 
the  intricate  composition  will  show  almost  every 
characteristic  detail  of  an  Assyrian  battle.  It  is, 
besides,  of  particular  interest,  because  it  includes 
the  death  of  Teumman :  the  wounded  king  is  kneel- 
ingj  with  extended,  imploring  hands,  while  his  son 
still  defends  him  with  drawn  bow.  Above  them 
the  inscription  runs  thus  :  '■  Teumman  with  a  sharp 
command  to  his  son  had  said,  '  Draw  the  bow'  "  The 
interest  in  another  of  these  scenes  is  centred  on 
a  chariot  driving  at  full  speed,  with  a  warrior  in  it 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSnUR.  -^qj 

who  holds  aloft  a  man's  head.  The  inscription 
above  informs  us  that  this  is  Teumman's  head  car- 
ried from  the  field. 

17.  It  was  eventually  taken  to  Nineveh,  where  it 
figured  in  the  king's  triumphal  procession,  when, 
'*  with  the  conquests  of  Elam  and  the  spoil  which  b\- 
command  of  Asshur  his  hands  had  taken,  with  mu- 
sicians making  music,  into  Nineveh  he  entered  with 
rejoicings."  The  head  of  Teumman  had  been  tied 
on  a  string  and  hung  around  the  neck  of  one  of  his 
chief  allies  and  friends,  a  prince  of  the  marshes,  who 
had  been  captured  alive,  and  now  walked  in  the  pro- 
cession. The  two  envoys  whom  Teumman  had  sent 
to  demand  the  fugitive  princes,  and  who  had  been 
detained  prisoners,  first  learned  their  master's  fate 
by  beholding  this  miserable  show.  At  sight  of  it 
they  tore  their  beards,  and  one  of  them  ran  himself 
through  with  his  sword,  while  Teumman's  head  was 
"  raised  on  high  "  in  front  of  (or  above)  the  great 
gate  of  Nineveh,  and  exposed  before  the  eyes  of  the 
people,  who  reviled  it.  Then  began  the  executions. 
Those  captives  who  had  the  misfortune  to  be  of 
high  birth  and  exalted  rank  were  put  to  death  under 
the  most  barbarous  tortures,  some  in  Nineveh, 
others  in  Arbela.  What  the  annals  pass  over  in  a 
few  matter-of-fact  words,  the  sculptures  but  too  viv- 
idly bring  before  us,  with  the  usual  explanatory 
inscriptions.  For  instance :"....  u^ho  against 
Asshur  the  god,  my  father  uttered  great  curses^ 
their  tongues  I  pulled  otit,  I  tore  off  tJieir  skins,""  above 
a  scene  where  both  these  tortures  are  represented. 
It  was  under  these  ghastly  auspices  that  the  fugitive 


2Q2  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

princes  were  restored  to  their  country,  and  one  of 
them,  Ummanigash,  a  son  of  Urtaki,  was  placed 
on  the  throne,  while  his  younger  brother,  Tamma- 
ritu,  received  the  government  of  an  important 
province  of  Elam.  These  things  happened  about 
655  B.C. 

18.  It  is  a  curious  instance  of  providential  retribu- 
tion that  Asshurbanipal,  one  of  the  most  ruthless, 
complacently  cruel  of  even  Assyrian  monarchs, 
should  have  met  with  ingratitude  whenever  he  did 
really  confer  benefits.  Thus  he  certainly  had  been 
a  good  brother  to  Shamash-Shumukin,  the  young 
viceroy  of  Babylon,  whose  power  and  income  he  had 
confirmed  and  increased.  Yet  the  latter  planned 
his  overthrow  and  very  nearly  succeeded  in  achiev- 
ing it.  Whether  he  would  have  been  content  with 
establishing  an  independent  royalty  for  himself  in 
Babylonia,  or  whether  he  meditated  ultimately  seiz- 
ing on  the  Assyrian  crown  also,  there  is  nothing  to 
indicate  with  any  certainty.  At  all  events,  he  went 
to  work  with  as  much  craftiness  and  far-sightedness 
as  Merodach-Baladan  had  ever  done,  and  brought 
about  a  coalition  as  extensive  and  which  proved 
more  nearly  successful,  because  the  times  were  more 
ripe  and  the  measure  of  oppression  and  hatred 
fuller.  Many  of  the  actors  in  the  drama  were  the 
same  as  fifty  years  ago  :  now,  as  then,  the  conspira- 
tor's chief  reliance  was  placed  on  Egypt,  where 
Psammetik  was  eagerly  watching  his  chance  (see  p. 
380),  and  whose  name  was  sufficient  to  give  "  the 
kings  of  Khatti  "  courage  to  rise.  It  was  at  this 
time  that  the  defection  of  Gyges  the  Lydian  took 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR.  393 

place,  of  wliom  Assluirbanipal  complains  that  he 
sent  troops  to  the  king  of  Egypt  (see  p.  380).  Last- 
ly, Ummanigash,  the  new  king  of  Elam,  joined  the 
coalition,  his  loyalty  not  being  proof  against  the 
prospect  of  recovering  his  country's  political  inde- 
pendence combined  with  the  heavy  bribe  offered  by 
Shamash-Shumukin.  He  even  effected  a  reconcilia- 
tion with  the  son  of  Teumman,  and  incited  him  to 
action,  saying  :  ''  Go  ;  against  Assyria  revenge  the 
slaying  of  thy  father."  Shamash-Shumukin  found 
no  difficulty,  it  appears,  in  gaining  over  to  his  cause 
Babylon  itself,  and  the  great  cities  of  the  South, 
""  seats  of  the  gods,"  although  Asshurbanipal  had 
been  most  lavish  in  adorning  their  temples  with 
gold  and  silver,  and  setting  up  in  them  images  of 
the  gods.  All  these  preparations,  which  must  have 
taken  some  years,  were  carried  on  with  the  utmost 
secrecy  and  skill,  and  just  before  the  outbreak  the 
wily  viceroy,  who,  as  the  inscriptions  pointedly  say, 
"  was  speaking  good,  but  in  his  heart  was  choosing 
evil,"  the  better  to  lull  his  brother  into  dangerous 
security,  sent  to  Nineveh  one  of  those  compliment- 
ary embassies  so  much  in  use  among  Orientals.  The 
envoys  were  received  with  the  most  brotherly  cor- 
diality, clothed  in  robes  of  honor,  feasted  at  the 
king's  own  table  and  dismissed  with  costly  presents. 
This  last  blind  gave  time  to  mature  the  plot,  and 
the  outbreak  found  Asshurbanipal  unsuspecting 
and  unprepared. 

19.  "  In  those  days,"  he  then  informs  us,  "  a  seer  slept  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  night  and  dreamed  a  dream,  thus  :  '  On  the  face  of  the 
Moon  it  is  written  concerning  them  who  devise  evil  against  Asshur- 


^g  .  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

banipal,  king  of  Asshur.  Battle  is  prepared.  A  violent  death  I 
appoint  for  them.  With  the  edge  of  the  sword,  the  burning  of  fire, 
famine,  and  the  judgment  of  Nineb,  I  will  destroy  their  lives.'  This 
I  heard  and  trusted  to  the  will  of  Sin,  my  lord.  I  gathered  my  army; 
against  Shamash-Shumukin  I  directed  the  march." 

20.  Dreams  and  prophecies  notwithstanding,  it  is 
very  doubtful  whether  Asshurbanipal  would  have 
been  able  to  weather  this  storm  and  win  a  respite  of 
fifty  years  for  Assyria,  had  not  the  house  of  Elam 
been  hopelessly  divided  against  itself,  so  that  its 
princes  thought  far  more  of  fighting  and  murdering 
each  other  than  of  supporting  their  ally.  Umman. 
igash,  the  Assyrian  nominee,  was  dethroned  by  his 
youngest  brother,  Tammaritu,  who  having  ''  de- 
stroyed him  and  part  of  his  family  with  the  sword," 
and  wishing  to  remove  the  unfavorable  impression 
which  he  had  produced  on  the  people  of  Elam  by 
his  ferocious  vengeance  on  his  uncle  Teumman,  flatly 
denied  that  he  had  had  any  part  in  his  death. 
Asshurbanipal  expressly  states  that  he  "  spoke  un- 
truth concerning  the  head  of  Teumman  which  he 
had  cut  off  in  the  sight  of  my  army,  thus  :  '  I  have 
not  cut  off  the  head  of  the  king  of  Elam  ....'" 
And  when  reminded  of  the  allegiance  he  owed  to 
his  former  protector,  he  replied  that  Jie  had  taken 
no  engagement  of  the  kind  ;  that  *'  Ummanigash 
only  had  kissed  the  ground  in  the  presence  of  the 
envoys  of  the  king  of  Asshur."  "So  he  did  not  re- 
new the  alliance  with  Assyria,  and  received  a  further 
bribe,  offered  by  the  rebellious  viceroy  of  Babylon. 
His  rule,  however,  was  but  brief,  notwithstanding 
his   attempts    at    winning    popularity.      The    royal 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR.  ogr 

house  of  Elam  had  now  arrived  at  that  state  of  fee- 
bleness and  dissension  which  invites  usurpers,  and 
such  are  ever  ready  in  the  persons  of  ambitious  gen- 
erals, who  can  rely  on  the  devotion  of  their  soldiers. 
It  was  in  this  way  that  the  crown  of  Elam  was  sud- 
denly snatched  from  Tammaritu  by  a  certain  Inda- 
BIGASH.  Tammaritu  escaped  with  life,  and,  for  the 
second  time,  fled  to  Nineveh,  with  many  of  his  kins- 
men, eighty-five  in  all.  He  kissed  the  royal  feet, 
threw  dust  on  his  hair  standing  at  the  royal  foot- 
stool, vowing  to  redeem  his  past  offences  by  loyal 
service,  if  the  king  would  but  overlook  his  defection. 
Asshurbanipal,  reflecting  that  the  fugitives  would 
once  more  prove  useful  tools  when  he  would  have 
time  to  attend  to  the  affairs  of  Elam,  received  them 
graciously,  and  gave  them  lodgings  within  his  own 
palace,  where  they  naturally  were  as  much  prison- 
ers as  guests. 

21.  For  the  present,  he  had  neither  time,  atten- 
tion, nor  forces  to  spare  for  anything  but  the  re- 
pression of  the  revolt  in  Babylonia.  Egypt  was  al- 
lowed to  have  its  own  way,  and  Psammetik  not  only 
shook  off  the  Assyrian  rule,  but  got  rid  of  all  the 
vassal  princes  and  restored  an  undivided  royalty  in 
Egypt.  Gyges  was  left  to  the  gods  and  the  Cim- 
merians were  suffered  to  gain  ground  unchecked. 
The  states  of  Syria  and  the  sea-coast  are  stated  to 
have  joined  the  coalition,  but  no  punishment  is 
recorded  as  inflicted  upon  them.  The  Medes  are 
not  so  much  as  mentioned,  and  subsequent  events 
prove  but  too  well  what  good  use  they  made  of 
the  time.     Having  thus  concentrated  all  his  powers 


396  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

on  one  task,  Asshurbanipal  need  not,  perhaps,  have 
boasted  quite  so  loud  of  having  accomplished  his 
'*  rebellious  brother's "  overthrow.  At  all  events 
it  was  complete.  The  siege  of  Babylon  was  so 
long  and  severe  that  the  inhabitants  were  reduced 
by  famine  to  feed  on  the  flesh  of  their  sons  and 
daughters.  How  the  end  came  is  only  hinted  at 
somewhat  obscurely  :  it  is  said  that  ''  the  gods  threw 
Shamash-Shumukin  in  the  fierce,  burning  fire  and 
destroyed  his  life."  We  often  see  in  sieges  por- 
trayed on  the  sculptures,  that  the  Assyrian  soldiers 
were  in  the  habit  of  hurling  firebrands  into  the 
cities  of  which  they  stormed  the  walls.  It  is  very 
likely  that  a  general  conflagration  may  have  been 
caused  in  this  manner,  and  that  the  viceroy  may 
have  perished  in  it,  an  end  which  his  brother,  quite 
in  accordance  with  his  religious  ideas,  regards  as  a 
special  divine  judgment.  The  vengeance  which  he 
took  on  the  survivors — pulling  out  the  tongues  of 
some  for  blaspheming  the  name  of  Asshur  ;  throwii/g 
others  into  pits  among  the  stone  bulls  and  lions  set 
up  by  Sennacherib,  i.e.,  probably  in  the  gates  of  Nin- 
eveh, as  a  spectacle  to  the  people  ;  cutting  off  limbs 
and  throwing  them  to  dogs,  bears,  vultures, — all 
these  horrors  he  represents  as  acts  of  pious  homage 
to  the  offended  deity  :  ''  After  I  had  done  these 
things,"  he  says,  ''and  appeased  the  hearts  of  the 
gods  my  lords,  the  corpses  of  the  people  whom  the 
Pestilence-god  had  overthrown  ....  out  of  the 
midst  of  Babylon,  Kutha,  Sippar,  I  brought  and 
threw  into  heaps."  Then  he  relates  how  he  further 
propitiated  the  gods,  by  gifts  and    religious  observ- 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR.  ^q^ 

ances  and  by  the  singing  of  psalms.*  Then,  having 
reduced  to  obedience  the  tribes  of  Kaldu,  Ara- 
means,  and  the  rest  of  Accad.  **  by  command  of 
Asshur  and  Belit  and  the  great  gods,  my  protectors, 
on  the  whole  of  them  I  trampled,  the  yoke  of 
Asshur  which  they  had  thrown  off  I  fixed  on  them. 
Prefects  and  rulers  appointed  by  my  hand  I  estab- 
lished over  them." 

22.  Among  the  Chaldean  princes  who  had  fol- 
lowed Shamash-Shumukin's  fortunes  was  NabU- 
BELZIKRI,  a  grandson  of  Merodach-Baladan,t  true 
to  the  traditions  of  his  race.  To  inflict  the  great- 
est possible  injury  on  the  hated  foe,  he  had  recourse 
to  stratagem.  He  feigned  loyalty  and  applied  for 
help.  The  king  indignantly  records  that  ''  sons  of 
Asshur  "  were  sent  to  his  aid,  and  ''  marched  with 
him,  guarding  his  country  like  a  wall  ;  "  but  he  cap- 
tured them  by  treachery  and  shipped  them  over  to 
Elam.  Indabigash,  who  then  was  already  king,  and 
who  wished  to  propitiate  the  Assyrian,  sent  them 
back  to  him  with  an  embassy  and  offers  of  alliance. 
But  this  attention  was  far  from  satisfying  the  en- 
raged monarch,  who  sent  back  to  him,  through  his 
own  envoy,  a  threatening  message  demanding  the 
surrender  of  Nabubelzikri  himself  and  his  compan- 
ions :  "  If  these  men  thou  dost  not  send,"  spoke  the 
king,    *'  I  will  march  ;  thy  cities  I  will  destroy  ;  the 

*  For  a  parallel  with  the  Jewish  ideas  on  similar  subjects,  see 
above,  pp.  8-10. 

t  Most  probably  the  son  of  Nahidh-marduk,  MerodachBaladan's 
youngest  son,  whom  Esarhaddon  appointed  to  the  principality  of 
Bit-Yakin. 


398 


THE  S TOR  Y  OF  ASS YRIA. 


people  I  will  carry  off :  from  thy  royal  throne  I  will 
hurl  thee,  and  another  on  thy  throne  I  will  seat. 
As  formerly  Teumman  I  crushed,  I  will  cause  to  de- 
stroy thee.  This  is  to  thee."  The  envoy  had  no 
occasion  to  repeat  the  royal  message  to  his  mas- 
ter. The  people  of  Elam,  hearing  of  Asshurbani- 
pal's  anger,  were  greatly  frightened  and  revolted 
against  Indabigash,  whom  they  put  to  death,  plac- 
ing on  the  throne  in  his  stead  the  son  of  another 
general,  who  reigned  under  the  name  of  UmmanaL- 
DASH  II. 

23.  This  new  usurper  was  not  devoid  of  dignity, 
and  would  not  purchase  protection  by  breach  of 
faith  with  his  guest.  From  some  small  and  much 
injured  fragments  it  would  appear  that  there  was 
also  some  correspondence  concerning  the  statue  of 
the  goddess  Nana,  carried  into  captivity  from  Erech 
by  the  first  Khudur-nankhundi,  and  that  Umma- 
naldash  would  not  return  the  statue.  These  two 
refusals  were  more  than  sufficient  pretences  for  an 
invasion.  Asshurbanipal  descended  on  Elam  and 
swept  it  through  in  a  brief  and  triumphant  cam- 
paign, accompanied  by  the  refugee  Tammaritu, 
whom  he  replaced  on  the  throne  in  Shushan.  In- 
credible as  such  recklessness  may  appear,  the  first 
thing  Tammaritu  did  was  to  turn  against  his  pro- 
tector and  rebel  for  the  second  time.  He  had  been 
in  too  great  haste,  however,  and  had  not  waited  for 
Asshurbanipal's  departure,  who  at  once  crushed  the 
revolt — a  success  of  which  he  gives  the  credit  to 
Asshur  and  Ishtar,  who,  he  says,  "broke  Tam- 
maritu's  hard   and   perverse  heart,  took   hold  of  his 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


399 


hand,  from  the  throne  of  his  kingdom  hurled  him 
and  overwhehned  him."  He  was  not  put  to  death, 
but  carried -back  to  Nineveh,  where  a  more  humih'at- 
ing  doom  awaited  him. 

24.  It  took  one  more  laborious  campaign  to  com- 
plete the  overthrow  of  Elam,  but  this  time  it  was 
final.  City  after  city,  town  after  town  was  pulled 
down,  burned,  sacked, — warriors  were  slaughtered, 
captives  carried  away  without  number.  Shushan, 
the  capital,  was  reserved  for  the  last.  It  had  never 
yet  been  sacked,  and  was  a  right  royal  prey.  As- 
shurbanipal  gloatingly  relates  how  he  opened  the 
treasure-houses  of  the  kings  of  Elam,  where  wealth 
had  accumulated  from  the  most  ancient  times, 
where  "  no  other  enemy  before  him  had  ever  puv 
his  hand  ;  "  how  he  brought  forth  not  only  that 
wealth,  but  all  that  had  ever  been  paid  to  the  kings 
of  Elam  for  their  aid  by  former  kings  of  Accad, 
and  now  lately  by  ShamashShumukin.  besides  all 
the  furniture  of  the  palace,  even  to  the  couch  on 
which  the  kings  had  reclined,  the  war  chariots, 
ornamented  with  bronze  and  painting,  horses  and 
great  mules,  with  trappings  of  silver  and  gold — all 
of  which  he  carried  off  to  Assyria.  But  Shushan 
was  not  only  the  chief  ''  royal  "  city  of  Elam,  it  was 
also  the  country's  sacred  city,  *'  the  seat  of  their 
gods,"  and  was  to  suffer  all  the  horrors  of  desecra- 
tion as  well  as  plundering.  Its  great  tower  (proba- 
bly the  ziggurat),  of  which  the  lower  part  was  cased 
in  marble,  was  demolished  and  broken  into  from 
the  roof,  "  which  was  covered  with  shining  bronze." 
The  sacred  groves,  int  >  the  midst   of  which   no  for- 


400 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


eigner  had  ever  penetrated,  nor  even  trod  their  out- 
skirts, were  cut  down  and  burned  by  the  Assyrian 
soldiery.  The  statues  of  the  gods  and  goddesses 
(of  whom  eighteen  are  given  by  name,  besides 
Shushinak,  the  supreme  god,  *'  the  god  of  their 
oracle,  who  dwelt  in  groves,")  were  carried  ofT  to 
Assyria  ''  with  their  valuables,  their  goods,  their 
furniture,  their  priests  and  worshippers."  The 
winged  bulls  and  lions  ''  watching  over  the  tem- 
ples "  were  either  broken  or  removed,  the  temples 
themselves  "  overturned,  until  they  were  not." 
On  this  occasion,  too,  the  statue  of  Nana  was  at 
length  carried  out  of  the  place  of  her  long  captivity 
of  over  1600  years  to  be  restored  to  her  own  old 
sanctuary  at  Erech."  Lastly,  thirty-two  statues  of 
former  and  later  kings,  including  one  of  Tammaritu, 
all  fashioned  in  gold  and  silver,  bronze  and  ala- 
baster, were  carried  to  Assyria.  On  some  of  them 
mutilation  was  inflicted ;  this  is  particularly  men- 
tioned of  one  king,  a  contemporary  of  Sennach- 
erib, against  whom  he  had  made  war;  Asshurba- 
nipal  boasts  that  '*  he  tore  off  his  lips  which  had 
spoken  defiance,  cut  off  his  hands  which  had 
held  the  bow  to  fight  Assyria."  He  winds  up 
the  dreadful  narrative  by  this  most  frightful  state- 
ment of  all : 

"  The  wells  of  drinking  water  I  dried  up  ;  for  a  journey  of  a  month 
and  twenty-five  days  the  districts  of  Elam  I  laid  waste,  destruction, 
servitude  and  drought  1  poured  over  them  ....  the  passage  of  men,  the 
treading  of  oxen  and  sheep  and  the  springing  up  of  good  trees  I  burnt 

*  See  **  Story  of  Chaldea,"  pp.  195,  343,  344. 


THE  DECLINE  OFASSHUR.  ^qi 

off  the  fields.  Wild  asses,  serpents,  beasts  of  the  field  safely  I  caused  to 
lay  down  in  themy  * 

And  after  enumerating  the  captives  he  led  away, 
from  the  daughters,  wives  and  famiHes  of  several 
kings,  down  through  the  list  of  governers,  citizens, 
officers  and  commanders  of  various  corps,  to  "  the 
whole  of  the  army  all  there  was,"  the  people,  male 
and  female,  small  and  great,  horses,  mules,  asses, 
oxen  and  sheep,  besides  *'  much  spoil,"  he  sums  up 
with  this  grim  but  expressive  piece  of  exaggeration  : 
"  The  dust  of  Shushan  Madaktu,  and  the  rest  of 
their  cities,  entirely  I  brought  to  Assyria." 

25.  This  was  the  end  of  Elam.  As  a  kingdom, 
as  a  nation,  it  was  no  more.  Its  name  henceforth 
disappears  from  the  ranks  of  countries.  And  when 
the  time,  now  so  near  at  hand,  arrived,  of  retribu- 
tion and  vengeance  on  the  destroyer  of  so  many 
nations,  Elam  was  not  one  of  the  avengers.  The 
poor  remnants  of  her  people  were  passing  under 
another  rule,  still  too  young  to  direct  events,  and 
stood  aloof,  rejoicing,  but  inactive.  Yet  Asshur- 
banipal,  in  the  last   pages  of  his  great  cylinder,  still 

*  The  Hebrew  prophet  Zephaniah,  who  lived  about  this  time,  thus 
announces  the  approaching  end  of  Assyria :  *'  And  Yahveh  will 
stretch  out  his  hand  against  the  north  and  destroy  Asshur,  and  will 
make  Nineveh  a  desolation  and  dry  like  the  wilderness.  And  herds 
shall  lie  down  in  the  midst  of  her,  all  beasts  of  every  kind  ....  desola- 
tion shall  be  in  the  thresholds,  for  he  hath  laid  bare  the  cedar  work. 
This  is  the  joyous  city  that  dwelt  carelessly,  that  said  in  her  heart  : 
'  I  am  and  there  is  none  beside  me  : '  how  is  she  become  a  desolation, 
a  place  for  beasts  to  lie  down  in  !  .  .  .  .  "  Have  we  here  a  revengeful 
reminiscence  of  the  words  of  the  Assyrian  document,  or  only  a 
similarity  of  thought  and  expression  derived  from  unity  of  race  ? 
26 


402 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


speaks  of  Elam,  even  of  "  kings  of  Elam."  For 
Ummanaldash  had  once  more  escaped  with  hfe, 
by  timely  flight  '*  into  the  mountains."  When  the 
wasters  and  spoilers  had  departed,  he  returned  into 
his  now  desert  cities, — "  he  entered,  and  sat  in  a 
place  dishonored."  But  Asshurbanipal  had  not 
done    with  him  even    yet.     The  companion  of  his 


■&;e.u»*  ijiTu'ift 


72. — ASSHURBANIPAL   FEASTING. 


flight  and  disasters  was  Nabubelzikri,  that  grand- 
son of  the  old  Chaldean  king,  and  as  long  as  he 
lived  and  was  free  the  Assyrian's  heart  was  not 
satisfied.  So  he  sent  once  more  to  demand  his 
surrender  from  the  heart  -  broken  whilom  king. 
Nabubelzikri,  the  inscription  goes  on  to  tell  with 
that  strange  pathos  which  their  great  simplicity  af 
times  lends  to   these   narratives — 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


403 


"  Nabubelzikri  heard  of  the  journey  of  my  envoy  who  into  Elam 
had  entered,  and  his  heart  was  afHictcd.  lie  inclined  to  despair; 
his  life  he  did  not  regard  and  he  longed  for  death.  To  his  own  ar- 
mor-bearer he  said  :  '  Slay  me  with  the  sword.'  He  and  his  armor- 
bearer  with  the  steel  swords  of  their  girdles  pierced  through  each 
other."  * 

By  this   magnanimous  act  the  last  of  a  heroic   race 
saved  his   friend   from   a   shameful   deed,  which  he 


a  ;,ELr«t  cjiiii 


']y — ASSHURBANIPAL  FEASTING. 


could  scarcely,  under  the  circumstances,  have  helped 
committing,  and    himself  from   worse   than    death. 


*  How  strikingly  like  this  tragedy  is  to  that  of  Saul  !  "Then  said 
Saul  to  his  armor-bearer  :  '  Draw  thy  sword  and  thrust  me 
through  therewith  lest  these  uncircumcised  come  and  thrust  me 
through  and  abuse  me.'  l:5ut  his  armor-bearer  would  not,  for  he  was 
sore  afraid.  Therefore  Saul  took  his  sword  and  fell  upon  it.  And 
when  his  armor-bearer  saw  that  Saul  was  dead,  he  likewise  fell  upon 
his  sword  and  died  with  him."     (I.  Samuel  xxxi.  4,  5.) 


404  ^-^-^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

His  desperate  determination  has  been  fully  justified 
by  a  small  fragment  found  among  the  rubbish  of  the 
Royal  Archives  in  Nineveh.  It  is  the  beginning  of 
a  letter,  and  runs  as  follows  :  ''  From  Ununanaldash^ 
king  of  Elam,  to  Asskurbanipal,  king  of  Asshur. — 
Peace  to  my  brotJier.  .  .  .  Forces  do  tJion  send;  for 
Nabiibelzikri  to  surrender  I  took.  I  zvill  surrender 
him  to  thee.  .  .  ."  Let  us  hope  that  the  unfortunate 
monarch,  reduced  to  such  abjectness,  gave  his  friend 
and  guest  a  timely  hint.  However  that  be,  he  kept 
word  with  the  Assyrian  to  the  letter :  he  surren- 
dered the  corpse  of  Nabubelzikri  and  the  head  of 
his  armor-bearer  to  the  envoy,  who  took  them  both 
into  the  royal  presence.  Asshurbanipal  only  re- 
cords in  his  great  cylinder  that  he  would  not  give 
burial  to  the  body,  but  cut  off  the  head  and  hung  it 
round  the  neck  of  a  follower  of  Shamash-Shumukin, 
who  had  gone  with  Nabubelzikri  into  Elam.  But 
a  sculpture  representing  a  feast  scene  in  the  royal 
gardens  completes  this  statement  in  the  most 
ghastly  manner.  Asshurbanipal  reclines  on  an  ele- 
vated couch  under  a  vine-arbor ;  his  favorite  queen 
is  seated  on  a  throne  at  the  foot  of  the  couch  ;  both 
are  raising  the  wine-cup  to  their  lips  ;  a  small  table 
or  stand  is  before  them  ;  on  another,  behind  the 
couch,  are  deposited  the  king's  bow,  quiver  and 
sw^ord.  Numerous  attendants  ply  the  inevitable 
fly-flappers,  beyond  these  musicians  are  ranged. 
Birds  are  playing  and  fluttering  in  the  palm-trees 
and  cypresses.  But  the  king's  gaze  is  fixed  on  a 
horrible  object  suspended  in  the  branches  of  one 
of  the  latter:  it  is  the  head  of  Nabubelzikri,  placed 


u 

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< 


75 


^>l 


4o6 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


there  that  he  may  deh'ght  liis  eyes  and  enhance  his 
pleasure  in  the  feast  by  gloating  on  the  dishonored 
relic  of  his  dead  enemy.  They  must  have  had 
some  way  of  preparing  human  heads  in  those  days, 
or  they  could  never  have  got  such  prolonged  enjoy- 
ment out  of  them. 

26.  At  the  same  time  that  Asshurbanipal  thus 
hunted  down  the  last  scion  of  the  ancient  house  of 
Yakin,  he  was  very  shrewdly  desirous  to  reassure 
and  conciliate  that  prince's  former  subjects.  Of 
this  we  have  a  curious  proof  in  a  proclamation,  by 
which  he,  so  to  speak,  introduced  to  them  the 
governor  he  sent  to  watch  and  rule  them,  with  a 
force  of  soldiers.  A  draft  or  copy  of  this  docu- 
ment turned  up  in  the  Library  at  Nineveh,  and  as 
it  may  be  interesting  to  see  how  an  Assyrian  royal 
proclamation  was  worded,  we  give  it  here : 

"  The  will  of  the  king  to  the  men  of  the  coast,  the  sea,  and  the 
sons  of  my  servants. — My  peace  to  your  hearts ;  may  you  be  well. — 
I  am  watching  sharply,  from  out  of  my  eyes,  over  you,  and  from  the 
face  of  the  sin  of  Nabubelzikri ....  entirely  I  have  separated  you. 
Now  Belikni,  my  servant,  mv  deputy,  to  go  before,  to  be  over  you 
I  send  to  you.  1  command  ....  of  myself  my  forces  I  send.  I  have 
joined  with  you,  keeping  your  good  and  your  benefit  in  my  sight," 

27.  As  for  Ummanaldash,  he  dragged  on  a  couple 
of  years  longer  a  miserable  phantom  of  royalty. 
And  yet,  brought  low  as  he  was,  there  was  found  a 
man  foolish  enough  to  covet  the  poor  shreds  of 
power  and  pomp  that  still  clung  to  him  :  Pakhe,  an 
obscure  upstart,  caused  the  country  to  revolt  against 
him,  and  Asshurbanipal  thus  relates  the  end  of  his 
career  in  Elam  :   ''  From  the  face  of  the  tumult  of 


U 
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Pi 
X 

in 


C/5 

O 


408 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


his  servants  which  they  made  against  him,  alone  he 
fled  and  took  to  the  mountain.  From  the  mountain, 
the  house  of  his  refuge,  the  place  he  fled  to,  like  a 
raven  I  caught  him  and  alive  I  brought  him  to 
Assyria." 

28.  According  to  the  most  probable  calculations, 
the  open  revolt  of  Shamash-Shumukin  took  place 
about  650  B.C.,  and  he  perished  in  648.  Then  the 
two  campaigns  against  Elam  bring  us  to  645  as  the 
most  likely  date  for  its  final  destruction  and  the 
sack  of  Shushan.  After  that  we  have  the  account 
of  one  more  expedition,  that  against  the  Arab 
princes,  who  had  been  led  to  support  the  rebellious 
viceroy.  As  usual,  whenever  Arabia  is  in  question, 
it  is  impossible  to  identify  the  places  exactly.  The 
king  tells  us  that  he  "  ascended  a  lofty  country, 
passed  through  forests  of  which  the  shadow  was 
vast,  with  trees  great  and  strong  ....  a  road  of 
mighty  wood,"  and  "  went  to  the  midst  of  Vas,  a 
place  arid  and  very  difficult,  where  only  the  birds 
of  heaven  and  the  wild  asses  are.  .  .  ."  The  latter 
description  seems  to  indicate  a  rather  remote  dis- 
trict in  the  interior  of  Arabia.  In  this,  the  last  dis- 
tant and  victorious  Assyrian  expedition  we  hear  of, 
the  spoil  in  camels  and  captives  was  so  abundant, 
that  on  the  army's  return  to  Assyria  the  captives 
were  gathered  and  bartered  in  droves,  w^hile  camels 
were  distributed  by  the  king  to  the  people  "  like 
sheep,"  and  those  that  were  offered  for  sale  in  front 
of  the  gates  of  Nineveh,  sold  for  only  half  a  shekel 
of  silver  (about  31  cents)  apiece.  One  of  the  most 
powerful  Arab  chieftains,  Vaiteh,  whose  territory 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR.  ^qq 

bordered  on  Edom,  Moab  and  Amnion,  was  captured, 
and  Asshurbanipal  granted  him  his  Hfe,  though 
not  his  liberty,  after  having,  with  his  own  hand, 
struck  down  his  son  before  his  eyes,  "  by  command 
of  Asshur  and  Beht,"  of  course.  He  returned  by 
the  road  of  the  sea-shore,  for  he  mentions,  incident- 
ally, having  '*  destroyed  the  people  of  Akko,  who 
were  unsubmissive."  These  are  the  last  warlike 
deeds  of  Assyrian  arms  in  Syria  of  which  we  have 
any  record. 

29.  Asshurbanipal,  in  the  conviction  that  he  had 
brilliantly  weathered  the  direst  storm  that  ever  yet 
had  imperilled  the  Empire,  now  considered  himself 
entitled  to  a  public  triumph  of  unexampled  splen- 
dor. On  his  return  to  Nineveh  he  organized  a 
festive  show  on  a  scale  surpassing  all  precedents. 
In  accordance  with  the  Assyrian  character,  it  w^as  of 
a  pre-eminently  religious  nature,  and  chiefly  con- 
sisted in  sacrifices  and  drink-offerings  to  Belit, 
''  mother  of  the  great  gods,  beloved  wife  of  Asshur." 
But  the  great  feature  of  the  procession  was  that 
Asshurbanipal  ordered  the  last  three  kings  of  Elam 
— Tammaritu,  Ummanaldash  and  Pakhe,  captive — 
and  Vaiteh,  the  Arab  chieftain,  to  be  yoked  to  his 
war-chariot,  and  was  drawn  by  them  in  state  to  the 
gates  of  the  temple,  w^here,  having  alighted,  he  lifted 
up  his  hands  and  praised  the  gods  before  the  assem- 
bled army.  It  was  a  strange  irony  of  fate  which  thus 
placed  on  a  foot  of  equality  the  two  upstart  usurp- 
ers and  the  last  descendant  of  a  line  of  kings,  reach- 
ing back,  for  aught  we  know,  to  the  first  invaders  of 
Accad — and  a  stranger  still,  that  this  act  of   insane 


A  I  o  TB£  S TOR  V  OF  ASS YRIA. 

pride  should  be  the  last  glimpse  we  have  of  Assyr- 
ian greatness,  to  be  almost  immediately  followed  by 
an  utter  and  irretrievable  fall.  This  is  an  almost  too 
pointed  illustration  of  the  trite,  familiar  saying  ! 

30.  For  on  this  unnatural  pinnacle  we  take  leave 
of  Asshurbanipal,  although  he  lived  and  reigned 
many  years  longer.  His  death,  indeed,  cannot  be 
placed  earlier  than  626  B.C.,  and  the  latest  of  his 
two  great  cylinders  brings  down  his  annals  to  about 
640.  But  by  reason  of  the  absolute  lack  of  monu- 
ments this  long  interval  is  a  blank,  as  far  as  knowl- 
edge of  any  events  that  filled  it  goes.  It  is  very 
probable  that  the  last  of  the  great  Assyrian  mon- 
archs  spent  those  years  mostly  in  enjoying  the  lux- 
urious leisure  to  which  he  naturally  inclined,  and 
indulging  his  literary  and  artistic  tastes,  as  well  as 
his  religious  propensities.  So  much  has  been  said  in 
another  volume  about  his  library,^  and  so  often  have 
its  contents  been  referred  to,  both  in  that  volume 
and  the  present  one,  that  more  details  are  uncalled 
for  except  to  mention  that  the  palace  in  which  the 
library  was  situated,  and  the  halls  of  which  were 
so  lavishly  decorated  with  historical  slab-sculptures, 
was  not  really  a  new  structure,  but  rather  Sen- 
nacherib's old  palace  restored  and  considerably 
enlarged.  It  was  the  captive  Arab  chieftains,  with 
their  tribes,  who  were  employed  on  the  work  of 
carrying  burdens  and  building  the  brickwork, 
which,    more    than    2000    years    later,    other   Arab 


*  See  "  Story  of  Chaldea,"  Chapter  IV.  of  Introduction,  "The  Book 
of  the  Past." 


^^t#:^ffi# 


^^■rrfj^^ 


"^^m 


76. — A  PERFECTLY  PRESERVED  TABLET — TWO  COLUMNS — ACCADIAN 
HYMN,  WITH  ASSYRIAN  TRANSLATION  FACING  IT — FROM 
ASSHURBANIPAL'S   LIBRARY    (KOYUNJIK). 


411 


412 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


tribes  under  their  sheikhs  were,  in  their  turn,  to 
clear  from  the  rubbish  of  ages  and  uncover  to 
the  eager  gaze  of  curious  foreigners.  Another  of 
those  strange  coincidences  with  which  history 
abounds ! 

31.  It  was  under  Asshurbanipal  that  Assyrian  art 
attained  its  greatest  perfection  of  execution  and 
detail.  As  regards  mere  ornamentation,  nothing 
could  surpass  the  profusion  and  the  exquisite  finish 

%<■ 

v.-    ,^v 


77.— TAME   LION    AND   LIONESS   AT   LIBERTY     IN    THE    ROYAL    PARK. 
GRAPE   VINE   AND    FLOWERS.       (aSSHURBANIPAL'S    PALACE.) 

of  the  designs,  the  richness  and  delicacy  of  the  tra- 
cery. The  historical  sculptures,  representing  bat- 
tles, sieges,  treaties,  scenes  of  war  and  peace  both, 
have  been  spoken  of  above  (see  p.  390).  But  the 
hunting  scenes  and  presentations  of  animals,  as 
usual,  bear  off  the  palm  in  point  of  interest  and 
artistic  beauty.  What  can  be  finer,  more  perfect  in 
form,  attitude  and  expression,  than  those  hounds 
starting  for  the  chase  ?  (See  ill.  No.  80.)     It  seems  as 


THE  DECLINE  OF  ASSHUR. 


413 


though  we  feel  them  tugging  at  the  leash,  and  hear 
their  deep,  eager  bay.  Asshurbanipal's  royal  kennel 
has  yielded  many  splendid  models  to  the  artists,  and 
he  was  so  fond  of  his  dogs  that  he  had  portraits  of 
his  especial  favorites  made  in  terra-cotta.  Several 
of  these  statuettes  have  been  found,  bearing  the  ani- 
mal's name — '' Tear-THE-FOE,"  and  such  like — 
along  its  back  or  on  its  collar  (see  ill.  No.  78).     The 


78. — TERRA-COTTA    DOG.       (ONE   OF   ASSHURBANIPAL'S    FAVORITES.)  - 

king  was  a  patron  of  every  kind  of  sport.  Lesser 
game — wild  asses,  antelopes — was  hunted  in  many 
and  various  ways :  stalked,  netted,  lassoed,  driven 
to  a  centre.  But  the  game  which  the  king  himself 
almost  exclusively  affected,  was  the  game  of  games, 
the  royal  lion  ;  not  Asshurnazirpal  himself  had 
been  a  more  passionate  lion-hunter,  and  never  does 
his  handsome  figure  show  to  better  advantage  than 
in  the  exercise  of  his  favorite  and  dangerous  pas- 
time,  attired    in  the   close-fitting,  becoming    tunic, 


414 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


richly  embroidered,  short  -  sleeved  and  cut  high 
above  the  knee,  in  order  to  give  full  liberty  to 
every  movement,  full  play  to  every  muscle."^'  The 
lion-hunts  represented    on    Asshurbanipal's    sculp- 


79, — THRESHOLD-SLAB    IN    ASSHURBANIPAL's    PALACE    (KOYUNJIK). 

tures  are  very  numerous,  and  the  Assyrian  artists,  as 
usual,  appear  at  their  very  best  when  portraying  the 


*  See  Frontispiece.  A  ]:)articulav]y  spirited  and  finished  compo- 
sition ;  unique,  too,  as  in  no  other  do  we  see  the  king  leading  a  spare 
horse.     The  explanation  which  suggests  itself  is  that  the  animal  may 


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4i6 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


noble  beast  In  the  manifold  attitudes  called  forth 
by  the  various  stages  and  moments  of  the  chase. 
Some  of  their  works  in  this  line  have  become  uni- 
versally admitted  classical  models  in  art  ;  for  in- 
stance, the  famous  dying  lion  and  lioness.  (See  ill. 
Nos.  74  and  75.)  The  latter  especially,  with  her 
broken  back  and  paralyzed  hindquarters,  painfully 
rising  on  her  front  paws  to  hurl  a  last  roar  of  defi- 
ance at  the  foe,  is  a  masterpiece  in  the  highest  sense. 
32.  Asshurbanipal's  name  was  known  to  the 
Greeks  in  the  corrupted  form  of  Sardanapalus. 
They  made  of  him  the  last  king  of  Assyria,  an 
effeminate  tyrant,  who  spent  all  his  life  within  his 
palace,  in  the  enervating  luxury  and  idleness  of 
the  harem,  until  the  last  crisis  came,  when  he 
roused  himself  from  his  unmanly  torpor,  and,  sud- 
denly developing  into  a  hero,  fought  for  two  years 
for  life  and  crown,  and  at  the  last,  being  over- 
powered by  numbers,  erected  an  immense  pyre,  on 
which  he  burned  himself,  all  his  wives  and  all  his 
treasures.  This  story,  derived  from  the  same  source 
as  that  of  Semiramis  (see  p.  196,  ff.),  is  as  utterly 
worthless,  nor  was  it  believed  by  all  the  Greeks. 
Herodotus,  for  instance,  knew  better,  and  speaks  of 
Asshurbanipal's  successor. 


have  been  a  favorite  one,  and  that  the  rider,  being  thrown  or  dragged 
from  the  saddle,  the  king  may  have  secured  the  bridle,  to  try  and 
save  the  frightened  horse.  The  whole  scene  is  too  peculiar  not  to 
have  been  the  reproduction  of  a  real  occurrence,  possibly  executed 
at  the  king's  especial  command. 


XIII. 

THE   FALL   OF   ASSHUR. 

1.  It  is  much  to  be  regretted,  though  perhaps 
scarcely  to  be  wondered  at,  that  Assyrian  monu- 
ments should  utterly  fail  us  for  the  short  period 
after  Asshurbanipal's  death,  during  which  the  long 
score  standing  against  Assyria  was  summarily  wound 
up  and  paid  in  full.  It  is  quite  in  accordance  with 
what  we  know  of  Assyrian  annalists,  that  they  should 
be  silenced  by  disasters,  and  besides,  the  end,  coming 
so  suddenly,  must  have  been  preceded  by  a  time  of 
convulsion  and  tumult,  during  which  the  last  rulers 
of  an  empire,  hastening  headlong  to  dissolution, 
were  not  in  the  mood,  nor  had  the  leisure  to  build, 
to  sculpture  slabs  and  engrave  inscriptions.  We  are 
therefore  thrown  entirely  on  Greek  traditions  and 
accounts,  always  incomplete,  seldom  trustworthy 
and  very  fragmentary.  To  reconstruct  in  a  general 
way  the  course  of  events  is  about  as  tedious  and  un- 
certain an  operation  as  recomposing  a  torn-up  letter 
out  of  fragments  rescued  from  the  waste-paper 
basket,  with  many  of  the  scraps  lost. 

2.  We  do  not  even  know  for  certain  whether 
Asshurbanipal's  immediate  successor  were  the  last 
king  of  Assyria,  or  whether  there  was  one  more,  or 
even   two.     In   a    corner   of    the   great    platform   at 

27  417 


4i8 


l-HE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


Nimrud  (Kalah),  Layard  uncovered  the  ruins  of  a 
comparatively  small,  poorly  constructed,  meanly 
ornamented  building,  the  bricks  of  which  bear  the 
name  of  ''  ASSHUR-IDIL-ILI,  king  of  Asshur,  son  of 
Asshurbanipal,  king  of  Asshur,  son  of  Esarhaddon, 
king  of  Asshur."  But  there  are  some  fragments 
with  still  another  royal  name,  and  the  last  king  of 
all  is  called  by  Herodotus  and  other  Greek  histo- 
rians Sarakos,  which  could  very  well  be  an  abbre- 
viation and  corruption  of  '' AssJiur-akW\-\d^\Vi2.^' \ 
there  are,  too,  a  couple  of  small  fragments  which 
evidently  refer  to  a  time  of  disaster  and  tribulation, 
and  bear  that  very  name.  It  is  therefore  not  at  all 
impossible  that  the  long  line  of  Assyrian  rulers  may 
have  closed  with  an  Esarhaddon  II. 

3.  What  is  certain  is,  that  after  Asshurbanipal's 
death,  Assyria's  downward  course  was  incredibly 
rapid  and  constant,  having  begun  most  probably 
even  in  the  last  years  of  that  monarch's  lifetime. 
One  Greek  chronicler  states  that  ''  Sardanapalus 
died  at  an  advanced  age,  when  the  power  of  the 
Assyrians  had  been  broken  down."  Now  we  have 
seen  that  Egypt,  Syria  and  Media  had  slipped  from 
his  hold  while  he  was  throwing  all  his  weight 
against  Elam  and  Babylon.  Nor  does  he  seem  to 
have  made  any  effort  to  recover  lost  ground  after 
his  final  victory  in  that  direction.  He  must  have 
known  that  Psammetik  steadily  labored  to  bring 
the  Syrian  states  under  Egypt's  dominion,  for  we 
read  that  the  Egyptian  king  made  war  in  those 
parts  during  twenty-nine  years,  in  the  course  of 
which  he  took  Ashdod  and  probably  other  cities, 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSHUR. 


419 


too.  The  time  was  not  long  gone  when  such  tid- 
ings would  have  sufficed  to  bring  down  an  Assyrian 
force,  yet  no  interference  appears  to  have  been 
attempted.  True,  Urartu  had  been  friendly  now 
for  many  years ;  but  Scythians  and  Cimmerians 
threatened  from  the  north  and  north-west,  yet 
nothing  had  been  done  to  check  them  since  that 
one  campaign  into  the  Armenian  mountains,  which 
ended  with  the  capture  of  Gog,  the  Scythian  chief's, 
two  sons.  As  for  the  Medes,  they  also  had  been  let 
alone  since  the  first  years  of  the  reign,  and  had 
wisely  kept  aloof,  having  work  of  vital  importance 
to  attend  to  at  home.  And  when  they  reappear, 
it  is  no  longer  as  a  loose  federation  of  separate 
tribes,  under  independent  chieftains,  but  as  a  com- 
pact nation,  united  under  the  strong  rule  of  a  pow- 
erful, universally  acknowledged  king. 

4.  Exactly  how  or  in  how  long  a  time  the  change 
was  effected,  will  never  be  known,  as  we  have  no 
monuments  to  guide  us,  but  only  the  Medes'  own 
traditions,  as  retailed  to  us  by  Greek  writers.  He- 
rodotus tells  us  that  the  founder  of  the  new  royalty 
was  a  certain  Deiokes,  originally  a  simple  city-chief, 
who  gained  so  much  renown  for  his  great  wisdom 
and  uprightness,  that  not  only  his  own  clansmen, 
but  people  of  other  tribes  and  cities  as  well  came  to 
him  when  they  had  any  quarrels  and  submitted  the 
issues  to  his  judgment  instead  of  fighting  them  out ; 
that  he  cleverly  improved  his  ever  increasing  and 
widening  influence  until  he  converted  it  into  a  real 
power,  so  that  when,  backed  by  a  certain  number  of 
devoted  followers,  he  proclaimed  himself  king  over 


A 20  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

all  the  Median  cities  or  tribes,  he  met  no  resistance. 
He  built  himself  a  royal  residence,  the  city  of  Hag- 
matana  (Agbatana),  in  the  country  formerly  called 
Ellip,  and  wasted  by  Sennacherib  (see  p.  301),  and 
established  there  a  thoroughly  organized  central 
government.  When  he  died,  his  son,  Phraortes, 
quite  naturally  succeeded  him  as  king  of  all  Media. 
5.  Now  this  name  of  Deiokes  is  an  unusually  cor- 
rect rendering  of  one  which  we  find  on  some  Assyr- 
ian monuments  :  Dayaukku.  Sargon,  in  one  of  his 
wars  with  Urza  of  Van  (715  B.C.),  mentions  having 
taken  prisoner  and  carried  to  Nineveh  a  certain 
Dayaukku  and  his  son.  And  two  years  later  he 
goes  to  a  country  which  he  calls  Bit-Dayaukku, 
and  which  appears  to  border  on  Ellip,  to  the  north 
"or  north-west.  ^*  The  house  of  Dayaukku,"  after 
the  analogy  of  "  the  house  of  Omri,"  '■'  the  house  of 
Yakin,"  must  have  been  a  principality  founded  by 
a  chief  of  that  name.  It  was  evidently  of  some 
importance,  since  Sargon  takes  the  trouble  of  nam- 
ing it  individually,  together  with  Ellip,  instead  of 
including  it  in  the  total  of ''  forty-five  city-chiefs," 
whose  submission  he  received  that  year.  There  is 
therefore  nothing  improbable  in  the  supposition  that 
a  prince  of  the  house  of  Dayaukku,  and  bearing  the 
founder's  name,  was  the  first  to  unite  the  scattered 
tribes  of  his  nation  into  a  whole.  It  may  very  well 
be  that  he  established  the  seat  of  power  in  Ellip,  on 
account  of  its  beauty  and  fertility,  after  that  country 
had  been  laid  waste  and  its  royal  line  exterminated 
by  Sennacherib  ;  nor  is  there  anything  to  prove  that 
he  built  a  new  capital,  while   it  seems  very  likely 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSHCfR, 


421 


that  he  should  have  restored  and  enlarged  the  old 
royal  city  of  Ellip  What  the  origin  of  the  name 
Hagmatana  was,  we  do  not  know. 

6.  The  Medes  had  about  fifty  years  of  compara- 
tive peace,  and,  of  late,  total  freedom  from  invasion, 
in  which  to  accomplish  their  work  of  national  con- 
solidation and  organization — under  a  leader  fitted 
for  the  task,  a  time  amply  sufficient  for  a  people  al- 
ready ripe  for  the  change.  When  that  leader's  son 
succeeded  him  on  the  throne  which  he  had  built, 
the  first  hereditary  king  of  Media,  the  young  na- 
tion was  anxious  to  try  its  strength,  and  against 
whom  so  naturally  as  against  Assyria,  its  oldest  and 
most  deadly  foe,  weakened  also  at  this  time  by  her 
late  terrible  struggle  for  life?  For  the  first  time 
the  parts  were  reversed  and  the  invader  was  invad- 
ed. Phraortes  (the  Greek  corruption  of  the  Me- 
dian name  Fravartish),  after  some  successful  expe- 
ditions against  sundry  less  formidable  neighbors, 
crossed  the  Zagros  and  descended  into  Assy-ria. 
The  move,  however,  was  imprudent  and  premature. 
The  old  lion,  if  lamed,  was  not  yet  to  be  bearded 
with  impunity  in  his  own  den  by  one  solitary  assail- 
ant. There  was  a  battle,  in  which  the  invaders 
were  routed  and  driven  back,  and  Fravartish  re- 
mained on  the  field.  This  may  possibly  have  taken 
place  in  the  last  years  of  Asshurbanipal. 

7.  The  invasion,  however,  was  soon  repeated. 
UVAKSHATARA,  called  by  the  Greeks  Kyax- 
ARES,  the  son  and  successor  of  Fravartish,  was 
a  far  greater  man  and  better  warrior.  He  attrib- 
uted   his    father's  defeat    to    the    defective    organ- 


,^2  THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

ization  of  his  army,  and  at  once  proceeded  to  abol- 
ish the  old  division  by  clans  (see  p.  354),  which  gave 
no  chance  against  such  perfectly  organized  and 
drilled  veteran  troops  as  the  Assyrian.  Herodotus 
reports  of  him  that  he — 

"  divided  his  troops  into  companies,  forming  distinct  bodies  of  the 
spearmen,  the  archers  and  the  cavalry,  who  before  his  time  had  been 
mineled  in  one  mass  and  confused  together.  .  .  .  This  prince,  col- 
lecting  together  all  the  nations  which  owned  his  sway,  marched 
against  Nineveh,  resolved  to  avenge  his  father,  and  cherishing  a  hope 
that  he  might  succeed  in  taking  the  city.  A  battle  was  fought,  in 
which  the  Assyrians  suffered  a  defeat,  and  Kyaxares  had  already  be- 
gun the  siege  of  the  place,  when  a  numerous  horde  of  Scyths,  under 
their  king,  Madyes,  son  of  Protothyes,  burst  into  Asia  in  pursuit 
of  the  Cimmerians,  whom  they  had  driven  out  of  Europe,  and  en- 
tered the  Median  territory." 

8.  So  far  Herodotus.  We  have  already  seen 
(p.  359)  that  the  motive  he  ascribes  to  the  great 
Scythian  invasion  is  a  fanciful  one,  and  a  good  hun- 
dred years  out  of  the  way,  since  it  was  as  long  ago,  at 
the  least,  that  the  Cimmerians  had  appeared  on  the 
southern  shore  of  the  Black  Sea.  But  the  invasion 
itself  is  a  fact,  as  authentic  as  any  in  history.  The 
barbarians  who  came  thus  opportunely  to  gain  a 
respite  for  the  Assyrian  capital,  by  suddenly  drawing 
Kyaxares  away  to  defend  his  own  kingdom,  were 
the  people  of  Magog  (see  p.  383),  and  it  has  been 
suggested  that  their  chief,  Madyes,  may  have  been 
a  grandson  of  Gog  (Gagi),  since  his  father's  name, 
Protothyes,  looks  uncommonly  like  that  of  Pa- 
RITIYA,  one  of  those  sons  of  Gog  whom  Asshur- 
banipal  captured.^     They  were  a   people   of  horse- 

*  Fr.  Lenormant :  "  Origines  de  I'Histoire,"   Vol.   II.,  First  Part, 
p.  465. 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSHUR. 


423 


men  and  bowmen,  who  ate  the  flesh  of  houses  and 
drank  the  milk  of  mares,  whose  warfare  was  one  of 
raids  and  plunder,  like  that  of  the  Cimmerians. 
What  started  them  from  their  quarters  at  the  foot  of 
the  Caucasus,  on  the  river  Kyros  (see  p.  383),  is  a 
mystery ;  most  probably  they  were  tempted  by  the 
state  of  general  agitation  into  which  the  entire 
Nairi  region  was  thrown  through  the  withdrawal  of 
the  heavy  pressure  exerted  on  it  by  the  fear  of  an 
ever  impending  Assyrian  interference.  Left  to 
themselves,  the  petty  nations  of  the  mountain-land 
were  more  independent,  but  also  more  defenceless, 
and  promised  to  fall  an  easy  prey  to  hordes  of 
mounted  bandits. 

9.  Media  was  by  no  means  the  only  victim  of 
the  Scythian  visitation.  They  swept  through  the 
greatest  part  of  Asia  Minor,  dislodged  various  peo- 
ples, whom  they  carried  along  with  them  on  their 
further  road  as  a  wild  torrent  carries  along  the  trees 
it  uproots  and  the  bridges  it  breaks  to  pieces  on  its 
way.  The  Cimmerians,  who  still  roamed  about  the 
lands,  but  were  becoming  few  and  scattered,  were 
easily  engulfed,  and  the  whole  mass  rushed  and 
rolled  southward.  They  had  overrun  Syria  and 
Palestine  almost  before  the  unfortunate  peoples  of 
those  much-suffering  countries  had  heard  of  their 
coming,  and,  according  to  a  tradition  recorded  by 
Herodotus,  would  have  gone  on  straight  into 
Egypt,  had  not  Psammetik  "met  them  with  gifts 
and  prevailed  on  them  to  advance  no  further." 
Whereupon  they  turned  back,  but,  passing  by  the 
city  of    Ascalon,   a  body  of  stragglers   stopped   to 


4^4 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


plunder 'its   famous   temple,  devoted  to   the   Syrian 
goddess  Atargatis  or  Derketo. 

10.  This  was  the  emptying  of  that  *'  seething 
caldron  "  which  the  prophet  Jeremiah,  who  lived 
at  this  very  time  in  Judah,  saw  *'  in  the  North." 
Several  chapters  of  this  prophet  (iv.,  v.,  vi.)  are  de- 
voted to  the  Scythian  invasion,  and  its  being  "  from 
the  North  "  is  repeatedly  insisted  on  : 

"  Flee  for  safety,  stay  not,  for  I  will  bring  evil  from  the  North, 
and. a  great  destruction.  A  lion  is  gone  forth  from  his  thicket,  and 
a  destroyer  of  nations  "  (iv.  6).  "  Behold,  he  shall  come  up  as 
clouds,  and  his  chariots  shall  be  as  the  whirlwind :  his  horses  are 
swifter  than  eagles.  Woe  unto  us,  for  we  are  spoiled"  (iv.  13). 
" .  .  o  .  It  is  a  mighty  nation,  it  is  an  ancient  nation,  a  nation  whose 
language  thou  knowest  not,  neither  understandest  what  they  say. 
Their  quiver  is  an  open  sepulchre,  they  are  all  mighty  men  '"  (v.  15, 
16).  *'....  Behold,  a  people  cometh  from  the  north  country; 
and  a  great  nation  shall  be  stirred  from  the  uttermost  ends  of  the 
earth.  They  lay  hold  on  bow  and  spear ;  they  are  cruel  and  have 
no  mercy ;  their  voice  roareth  like  the  sea,  and  they  ride  upon 
horses  .  ,   .  .  "  (vi.  22,  23). 

11.  Ezekiel  is  even  more  explicit.  He  wrote 
years  later,  when  the  captivity  which  Jeremiah  an- 
nounced had  actually  come  to  pass.  But  so  vivid 
was  the  recollection  of  the  Scythian  scourge,  the 
effects  of  which  he  had  perhaps  witnessed  in  his 
early  youth,  that  in  one  of  his  grandest  visions,  in 
which  he  portrays  in  the  form  of  a  prophecy  the 
fury  of  all  the  nations  of  the  world  let  loose  against 
the  people  ofYahveh  but  checked  by  him  in  the 
end,  he  borrows  some  of  the  most  telling  features 
from  that  visitation.  The  invading  hordes  are  per- 
sonified under  the  name  of  "Gog,  of  the  land  of 
Magog,"   and    said    to    bring    with  them  '*  a  great 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSHUR.  425 

company  "  of  nations,  "  Gomer  and  all  his  hordes, 
the  house  of  Togarmah  in  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  North,  and  all  his  hordes,  even  many  peoples 
with  thee." 

"  Thou  shalt  come  like  a  storm,  thou  shalt  be  like  a  cloud  to  cover 
the  land,  and  all  thy  hordes,  and  many  people  with  thee.  .  .  Thou 
shalt  devise  an  evil  device ;  and  thou  shalt  say,  I  will  go  up  to  the 
land  of  unwalled  villages  ;  I  will  go  to  them  that  are  at  quiet,  that 
dwell  securely,  all  of  them  dwelling  without  walls  and  having 
neither  bars  nor  gates ;  to  take  the  spoil  and  to  take  the  prey  ;  to 
turn  thine  hand  against  the  people  that  are  gathered  out  of  the  na- 
tions which  have  gotten  cattle  and  goods.  .  .  .  Thou  shalt  come 
from  thy  place  out  of  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  North,  thou  and 
many  peoples  with  thee,  all  of  them  riding  upon  horses,  a  great  com- 
pany and  a  mighty  army.  ...  I  will  bring  thee  upon  the  mountains 
of  Israel  ;  and  I  will  smite  thy  bow  out  of  thy  left  hand,  and  will 
cause  thine  arrows  to  fall  out  of  thy  right  hand.  .  .  .  And  it  shall 
come  to  pass  in  that  day  that  I  will  give  to  Gog  a  place  for  burial 
in  Israel  ....  and  they  shall  call  it  the  valley  of  the  multitude 
of  Gog." 

12.  We  do  not  know  in  what  way  Palestine  and 
Syria  were  rid  of  their  terrible  visitors.  They  are 
said  to  have  held  Western  Asia  under  their  dominion 
for  a  number  of  years  (twenty-eight,  according  to 
Herodotus,  but  the  figure  is  now  thought  to  be  ex- 
aggerated), "  during  which  time,"  says  the  same  his- 
torian, ''their  insolence  and  oppression  spread  ruin 
on  every  side.  For,  besides  the  regular  tribute, 
they  exacted  from  the  several  nations  additional 
imposts,  which  they  fixed  at  pleasure  ;  and  further, 
they  scoured  the  country  and  plundered  every  one 
of  whatever  they  could."  It  is  scarcely  possible 
that  Assyria  with  her  accumulation  of  w^ealth,  the 
fruit  of  so  many  centuries  of  war  and  rapine,  should^ 


426 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


have    been   spared.       'Historians,   indeed,    consider 
this    invasion   to    have    been    the   shock   that  shat- 
tered the  already  loosened  and  never  very  compact 
structure  of  the  Assyrian  Empire  down   to  its  foun- 
dation,   and   disabled   it   from    resistance   when  the 
final  and  more  regular  assault  was  made.      Mr.  Geo. 
Rawlinson  and  Fr.  Lenormant    are  of  opinion   that 
the  frightful  condition  in  which  most  of  the  palaces 
were  found  by  Layard  and    Botta,  due  as   much   to 
fire  as  to  demolition,  is  a  visible  token  of  the  Scyth- 
ians' passage  over  the   land.      The   almost  total  ab- 
sence  of  any   valuables   among    the    ruins   accords 
well  with  the  predatory  character  of  their  raids  ;  but 
what    speaks   most    loudly  in    favor  of  the    sugges- 
tion Is  the  poverty-stricken    meanness   of  the  small 
and  unsightly  dwelling — palace  no   longer  I — w^hich 
Asshurbanipal's   successor,  Asshur-idil-ili,   built    for 
himself  in  the  south-east  corner  of  the  great  platform 
at  Kalah  :  "  This  coarseness  and  meanness,"  remarks 
Lenormant,  "  bear  witness  to  the   haste  with  which 
a  residence  of  some  sort   had  to  be   put   up   for  the 
king    immediately    after    a    great   disaster.  ...  A 
comparison  of  this  lowly  building  of  Asshur-idil-ili's 
with   the    splendid    sculptures    filling    that     which 
his  father  had   constructed  at  Nineveh,  is  more  elo- 
quent than   any  argument  to  paint   the  change  in 
the  condition  of  the  Assyrian  monarchy."^ 

13.  The  Hebrew  prophet  Zephaniah,  a  contem- 
porary, perhaps  expected  Assyria  to  perish  at  the 
hands  of  the  Scythians,  when  he  uttered  his  scath- 


*"  Origines  de  I'Histoire,"  Vol.  II.,  Part  First,  p.  446,  note. 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSHUR.  427 

prophecy.  (See  p.  402,  note.)  But  the  end  was  not 
to  come  for  a  few  years  yet.  Kyaxares  was  unable 
to  expel  the  barbarians  by  sheer  force,  and  resorted 
to  craft.  It  was  reported  that  he  and  his  nobles  in- 
vited Madyes  and  the  greater  part  of  his  people  to 
a  banquet,  and,  having  made  them  drunk,  mas- 
sacred them.  Some  such  stratagem  may  have  been 
used,  but  it  could  have  been  only  a  very  partial  rem- 
edy. It  is  probable  that  Kyaxares,  moreover,  by 
some  means — promises  and  bribes  very  likely — 
sowed  division  among  them,  and  attached  a  part 
of  them  to  himself,  for  later  on  we  are  told  that 
he  had  a  body-guard  composed  of  Scythians, 
who  taught  archery  and  hunting  to  the  young  sons 
of  the  Median  nobles.  Such  a  defection,  after  a 
massacre,  following  the  slaughter  of  the  chiefs, — for 
it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  an  ambush  in  the  form 
of  a  feast  would  have  been  laid  for  any  but  the 
chiefs, — would  weaken  the  rest  sufficiently  to  make 
them  leave  the  land.  At  all  events,  they  disappear, 
and  to  use  a  favorite  Assyrian  phrase,  ''the  trace 
of  them  is  not  seen." 

14.  Now  at  last  Kyaxares  could  turn  his  mind 
and  forces  once  more  to  his  long-cherished  and 
long-deferred  scheme.  The  then  reigning  Assyrian 
king — the  Saracos  of  Berosus  and  the  Greeks — un- 
wittingly suggested  his  next  move,  by  incautiously 
appointing  to  the  viceroyalty  of  Babylon  a  Chaldean, 
Nabu-PAL-UZZUR,  generally  known  as  NabopolaS- 
SAR,  who  immediately  entered  into  a  close  alliance 
with  the  Median  king.  They  agreed  that  they 
should  unite  their  efforts  to  overthrow  the  tottering 


428 


THE  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 


empire  and  share  the  territory  that  had  obeyed  its 
rule.  Nabopolassar,  of  course,  was  to  be  king  of 
Babylon.  To  seal  the  treaty  they  arranged  that 
Kyaxares'  daughter  Amytis  (or  Amuhia)  should 
be  given  in  marriage  to  NEBUCHADREZZAR  *  (Na- 
BU-KHUDURUZZUR),  the  son  of  Nabopolassar.  The 
agreement  thus  became  a  sort  of  family  covenant. 

15.  In  608  the  united  Median  and  Babylonian 
forces  began  the  siege  of  Nineveh.  We  may  take 
for  granted  that  each  of  the  allies  brought  into  the 
field  the  contingents  of  all  the  tribes  and  petty  peo- 
ples whom  each  held  under  his  subjection,  although 
few  are  mentioned  by  name.  The  desolation  was 
great.  Public  prayers  were  offered,  penitential 
psalms  were  sung,  a  general  fast  of  a  hundred 
days  was  proclaimed  for  the  city  and  army.  Nor 
were  more  active  measures  neglected.  The  great 
capital  had  still  endurance  left  for  a  two-years' 
siege.  Then  the  end  came.  We  are  simply  told 
that  Saracos,  when  the  enemy  was  close  at  hand,  set 
fire  to  the  royal  palace  and  perished  in  the  flames. 
There  is  nothing  improbable  in  this  tradition,  but 
nothing  to  prove  it  ;  no  details  whatever  exist  con- 
cerning this  great  catastrophe.  The  Tigris  is  said 
to  have  left  its  bed  that  year  and  broken  through 
the  city  wall,  opening  a  wide  breach  to  the  be- 
siegers. But  all  we  really  know,  is  that  Nineveh 
ceased  to  be,  and  with  it,  the  Assyrian  Empire. 

16.  We  have  seen  that  this  end  was  not  as  sud- 


*  This  form   is  more  correct  than  NebuchadA/sezzar,  and  also  oc- 
curs in  the  Bible  books. 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSHUR. 


429 


den  or  unprepared  as  it  appears  at  first  sight.  Con- 
temporaries seem  to  have  expected  it  for  some  time. 
Thus  the  Hebrew  prophet  Nahum,  who  wrote  at 
the  time  of  Shamash-Shumukin's  rebellion,  raised  a 
triumphant  song  of  wrath  and  vengeance,  which, 
though  premature  by  nearly  half  a  century,  de- 
scribes the  actual  event  with  thrilling  vividness. 
True,  the  destruction  of  one  great  city  was  much 
like  that  of  another,  and  there  was  no  lack  of  sub- 
jects for  such  studies  in  those  days.  But  the  special 
rebukes  addressed  to  Assyria  sum  up  its  individual 
character  as  a  nation  with  telling  master-strokes  ; 
and  the  whole  song  being  one  of  the  classical 
pieces  of  Hebrew  poetry,  we  shall  give  the  princi- 
pal parts  of  it.  The  prophet  exults  at  the  impend- 
ing ruin  of  Assyria  as  bringing  deliverance  to  his 
own  people. 

"  Thus  saith  Yahveh  :  ,  .  .  .  And  now  will  I  break  his  yoke  from 
off  thee,  and  will  burst  thy  bonds  in  sunder.  .  .  .  Behold,  upon  the 
mountains  the  feet  of  him  that  bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publish- 
eth  peace  !  Keep  thy  feasts,  O  Judah,  perform  thy  vows ;  for  the 
wicked  one  shall  no  more  pass  through  thee  ;  he  is  utterly  cut  off. 

*'....  The  chariots  rage  in  the  streets,  they  jostle  one  against 
another  in  the  broad  ways  ;  the  appearance  of  them  is  like  torches, 
they  run  like  the  lightnings.  .  .  .  The  gates  of  the  rivers  are  opened 
and  the  palace  is  dissolved.  .  .  .  Take  ye  the  spoils  of  silver,  take 
the  spoils  of  gold,  for  there  is  none  end  of  the  store,  the  wealth  of  all 
pleasant  furniture.  She  (Nineveh)  is  empty,  and  void  and  waste. 
....  Where  is  the  den  of  the  lions,  and  the  feeding  place  of  the 
young  lions,  where  the  lion  and  the  lioness  walked,  and  the  lion's 
whelp,  and  none  made  them  afraid  ?  The  lion  did  tear  in  pieces 
enough  for  his  whelps,  and  strangled  for  his  lionesses,  and  filled  his 
caves  with  prey,  and  his  dens  with  ravin.  .  ,  .  Woe  to  the  bloody 
city  !  It  is  all  full  of  lies  and  rapine.  .  .  .  The  noise  of  the  whip,  and 
the  noise  of  the  rattling  of  wheels ;  and  prancing  horses,  and  jump- 


.^o  ^^^  STORY  OF  ASSYRIA. 

ing  chariots ;  the  horseman  charging,  and  the  flashing  sword,  and 
the  glittering  spear  ;  and  a  multitude  of  slain,  and  a  great  heap  of 
carcasses  :  and  there  is  no  end  of  the  corpses.  .  .  .  And  it  shall 
come  to  pass  that  all  they  that  look  upon  thee  shall  flee  from  thee, 
and  say,  Nineveh  is  laid  waste;  who  will  bemoan  her?  Whence 
shall  I  seek  comforters  for  thee  ?  Art  thou  better  than  Noamon?* 
"  .  .  .  .  Behold  thy  people  in  the  midst  of  thee  are  women  ;. 
the  gates  of  thy  land  are- set  wide  open  unto  thine  enemies;  the 
fire  hath  devoured  thy  bars.  .  .  .  Thy  shepherds  slumber,  O  king 
of  Asshur,  thy  worthies  are  at  rest ;  thy  people  are  scattered  upon 
the  mountains  and  there  is  none  to  gather  them.  There  is  no  as- 
suaging of  thy  hurt ;  thy  wound  is  grievous :  all  that  hear  the  bruit 
of  thee  clap  the  hands  over  thee  ;  for  upon  whom  hath  not  thy  wick- 
edness passed  continually.''  " 

17.  But  the  finest  dirge  on  the  fall  of  Asshur  we 
owe  to  Ezekiel,  who  introduced  it  into  his  long  and 
elaborate  prophecy  on  Egypt,  against  which  Nebu- 
chadrezzar was  then  successfully  waging  war.  As 
Nahum  says  to  Asshur,  ''  Art  thou  better  than  No- 
amon. .  .  .?"  Ezekiel  says,  in  substance,  to  Egypt: 
"  Why  shouldst  thou  not  fall  ?  Art  thou  better 
than  Asshur?"  He  wrote  forty  years  after  the 
event.  So  the  wrath  and  the  bitterness  of  rancor 
were  past,  and  the  whole  passage  is  a  gorgeous  gem 
of  poetry  even  in  the  plain  prose  translation,  breath- 
ing a  spirit  of  lofty,  mild  contemplation,  almost  sor- 
row that  such  grand  things  should  be  doomed,  out 
of  their  own  wickedness,  to  perish. 

*^  And  it  came  to  pass  ....  that  the  word  of  Yahveh  came  unto 
me,  saying,  Son  of  man,  say  unto  Pharaoh,  king  of  Egypt,  and  to  his 
multitude  :  Whom  art  thou  like  in  thy  greatness  .''  Behold,  Asshur 
was  a  cedar  in  Lebanon,  with  fair  branches,  and  with  a  shadowing 

*  One  of  the  names  of  Thebes,  the  sack  of  which  was  then  a  re- 
cent memory. 


THE  FALL  OF  ASSILUR. 


431 


shroud,  and  of  an  high  stature,  and  his  top  was  among  the  clouds. 
The  waters  nourished  him,  the  deep  made  him  to  grow.  .  .  .  All 
the  fowls  of  heaven  made  their  nests  in  his  boughs,  and  under  his 
branches  did  all  the  beasts  of  the  field  bring  forth  their  young,  and 
under  his  shadow  dwelt  all  great  nations, — thus  was  he  fair  in  his 
greatness.  .  .  .  The  cedars  in  the  garden  of  God  could  not  hide 
him  \  the  fir-trees  were  not  like  his  boughs,  and  the  plane-trees  were 
not  as  his  branches  :  nor  was  any  tree  in  the  garden  of  God  like  unto 
him  in  his  beauty.  .  .   . 

"  I  have  driven  him  out  for  his  wickedness.  And  strangers,  the 
terrible  of  the  nations,  have  cut  him  off,  and  have  left  him.  Upon 
the  mountains  and  in  all  the  valleys  his  branches  are  fallen,  and  his 
boughs  are  broken  by  all  the  watercourses  of  the  land  ;  and  all  the 
people  of  the  earth  are  gone  down  from  his  shadow  and  have  left 
him.  Upon  his  ruin  all  the  fowls  of  the  heaven  shall  dwell  and 
all  the  beasts  of  the  field  shall  be  upon  his  branches.  ...  In  the 
day  when  he  went  down  to  Sheol,*  I  caused  a  mourning  :  I  covered 
the  deep  for  him,  and  I  restrained  the  rivers  thereof,  and  the  great 
waters  were  stayed ;  and  I  caused  Lebanon  to  mourn  for  him,  and 
all  the  trees  of  the  field  fainted  for  him.  " 


•      • 


18.  It  may  appear  strange,  even  though  the  collapse 
was  foreseen  and  prepared,  that  it  should  have  taken 
place  with  such  exceeding  rapidity  just  toward  the 
end.  The  principal  explanation  to  offer  is  start- 
lingly  simple.  There  must  have  been  compara- 
tively few  real  Assyrians  left  in  Assyria,  except  in  the 
army,  in  offices,  and  around  the  person  of  the  king. 
It  was  not  only  that  the  country  had  been  ''slowly 
bleeding  to  death  with  its  own  victories,"  but  great 
numbers  of  Assyrians  had  been  transported  to  every 
quarter  of  the  empire,  to  every  half-subdued  and 
always  unreliably  submissive  province,  where,  at  a 
crisis,  they  could  be  of  no  use  unsupported  by  forces 


*  The  lower  world,  the  world  of  the  dead. 


.^2  ^-^^  STORY  OF  ASSYI^IA. 

from  home,  and  must  -have  either  perished  or  been 
absorbed  in  the  native  population ;  while  on  the 
other  hand,  corresponding  masses  of  foreigners 
were  settled  in  the  mother  country,  a  constant  un- 
dermining element  of  discontent,  hatred,  and,  no 
doubt,  of  treasonable  practices.  We  know  from 
Sargon  in  what  manner  Assyrian  kings  used  to  peo- 
ple their  new  cities  ;  and,  as  late  as  after  the  last 
wars  with  Elam,  Asshurbanipal  transported  to  As- 
syria thousands  of  Elamite  families.  It  stands  to 
reason  that  when  the  invasions  began,  there  was  no 
defence  but  within  the  walled  and  fortified  cities, 
and  even  in  those  treason  must  have  been  rife. 

What  wonder,  then,  that  ''  the  gates  of  the  land 
were  set  wide  open  to  the  enemies,  and  the  fire  de- 
voured its  bars  "  ? 

And  thus,  with  his  own  weight,  with  his  own 
wickedness  and  folly,  Asshur  fell.  It  was  a  griev- 
ous fall,  and  an  utter  fall. 


(( 


n 


PRINCIPAL    DATES  GIVEN  IN    THIS 

VOLUME. 

Ishmi-Dagan  and  his  son  Shamash-Raman,  first 

KNOWN  Patesis  OF  AssHUR about    1800  B.C 

Battle  OF  Megiddo  (Dhutmes  III.) about  1600 

Boundary  treaty  between  Assyria  and  Babylo- 
nia (first  known  political  act  of  Assyria)      about  1450 

Battle  OF  Kadesh  (Ramses  II.) about  1380  " 

Foundation  of  Kalah  by  Shalmaneser  I.      .    .     about  1300  " 
Conquest  of  Babylon  by  Tukulti-Nineb  I.   a  little  after  1300  " 

Tiglath-Pileser  1 about  1 1 20- II 00  " 

Foundation  of  Gades  (Cadix)  by  the  Phcenicians 

about  1 100  " 

Asshur-nazir-pal 884-860  " 

Shalmaneser  II 860-824  " 

Battle  of  Karkar  (Syrian  League) 854  " 

Jehu,  King  of  Israel,  pays  tribute  to  Shalmaneser  II.  842  " 
Foundation  of  Carthage  by  the  Phcenicians      .     .     .     814  " 

Tiglath-Pileser  II 745-727  " 

Menahem,  King  of  Israel,  pays  tribute  to  Tiglath- 
Pileser  II 738  " 

HosEA  established  King  over  Israel  and  tribute 

OF  Ahaz,  King  of  Judah 734  " 

Sargon  (Sharru-kenu) 722-705  " 

Fall  of  Samaria 722  " 

Battle  OF  Raphia  (Shabaka  OF  Egypt) 720" 

Foundation  OF  Dur-Sharrukin 712  " 

Sennacherib  (Sin-akhi-irib) 705-681  " 

Invasion  of  Judah  and  deliverance  of  Jerusalem  .    .    701  " 
Battle  of  Khaluli  (Babylon  and  Elam),  and  destruc- 
tion OF  Babylon 692  07691  " 

Esarhaddon  (Asshur-akhi-iddin) 681-668  " 

ASSHURBANIPAL  (AsSHUR-BANt-HABAL) 668-626  " 

Fall  of  Nineveh  .     ,     .     .     , 606  " 

2^  433 


INDEX. 


A. 

Abraham  journeys  to  Egypt,  23 ; 
buys  land  from  the  Hittites  of 
Hebron,  32. 

Accad,  see  Agade. 

Acre,  see  Akko. 

Adonis-Thammuz,  the  young  sun- 
god  of  Gebal,  141 ;  festival  of, 

Adonis,  river  in  Phoenicia,  141. 
Afghanistan,    a    part    of    ancient 
Ariana,  inhabited  by  Eranians, 

351- 
Agade,  or  Accad,  most  northern 

of  great  Accadian  cities,  i,  2. 

Agbatana,  see  Egbatana. 

Aitiological  myths,  126. 

Ahab,  King  of  Israel,  a  member 
of  the  Syrian  league  against 
Shalmaneser  II.,  179;  his  vic- 
tory over  and  leniency  to  Ben- 
hadad  II.  of  Damascus,  180; 
his  renewed  war  against  Ben- 
hadad,  and  dea''-i  in  battle,  182. 

Ahaz,    King   of   juJ.ih,    229;    at 
tacked  by  Israel  and  Syria,  230; 
seeks  the  protection  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser  II.,  231  ;  pays  homage  to 
him  at  Damascus,  235. 

Akhabbu  Sirlai,  see  Ahab  of  Is- 
rael. 

Akharri,  mat, — "  Land  of,"  As- 
syrian name  for  Phoenicia,  194. 

Akkaron,  see  Ekron. 

Akko,  modern  Acre — one  of  the 
Phoenician  cities,  78. 

Alarodians,  the  people  of  Urartu. 
204 ;  sometimes  called  Proto- 
Armenian,     205 ;     probably    a 


branch  of  the  Hittite  family, 
205-206. 

Alluvium,  line  marking  the  begin- 
ning of,  in  Mesopotamia,  i. 

Altaku  (or  Eltekeh),  battle  of, 
between  Sennacherib  and  Ta- 
harka,  310. 

Amazons,  originally  the  women 
ministering  in  the  temples  of 
the  Ilittite  nature-goddess,  365. 

Amber,  Phoenician  trade  in,  92-93  ; 

Ammon,  alliance  of,  with  Israel, 
against  .Assyria,  180;  king  of, 
does    homage    to    Esarhaddon, 

340- . 

Amuhia,  see  Amytis. 

Amytis  (also  Amuhia),  daughter 
of  Kyaxares,  married  to  Nebu- 
chadnezzar, son  of  Nabopolas- 
sar,  42S. 

Anakim,  a  pre-Canaanitic  people 
of  Palestine,  73-74. 

Anu,  god ;  head  of  the  great  As- 
syro-Babylonian  triad,  17. 

Aphaka,  a  Phoenician  city;  cylin- 
der from,  ro8. 

Arados,  see  Arvad. 

Arakhtu  Canal  in  Babylonia,  314. 

Aramaeans,  first  advance  of, 
56. 

Ararat,  Mo.,  in  Urartu  or  Arme- 
nia, 204. 

Aras,  ancient  Ara.xes,  river,  383. 

Ara.xes,  modern  Aras,  river,  383. 

Arba-ilu,  see  Arbela. 

Arbela,  one  of  the  great  Assyrian 
cities,  3. 

Ardys,  King  of  Lydia,  son  and 
successor  of  Gyges,  submits  to 
Asshurbanipal,  381. 


435 


43^ 


INDEX. 


Ariana,  classical  name  of  a  part 
of  Asia,  351. 

Arpad,  Syrian  principality  and 
city,  225;  joins  a  coalition 
against  Tiglath-Pileser  II.,  ib.  ; 
siege  of,  226 ;  rises  against  Sar- 
gon,  255. 

Art,  Hittite,  35,  363-367 ;  Phoe- 
nician, 98-99;  Assyrian,  under 
Asshurnazirpal,  165-170;  under 
Sargon,  283-287 ;  under  Sen- 
nacherib, 329-331 ;  under  As- 
shurbanipal,  412-416. 

Arvad,  Greek  Arados,  one  of  the 
great  Phoenician  cities,  60,  78 ; 
King  of,  does  homage  to  Esar- 
haddon,  340 ;  to  Asshurbanipal, 

Aryan  race,  also  called  Indo-Eu- 
ropean and  Indo-Germanic  race, 
349-350;  split  into  two  branches 
in   Asia,  the   Indian    and  Era- 

^  nian,  351-352- 

Aryas,  the  fourth  of  the  great 
races,  349, 

Asia  Minor,  situation  of,  33. 

Ascalon,  one  of  the  five  Philistine 
cities ;  temple  of  Derketo  at, 
III,  114,  150;  King  of,  does 
homage  to  Esarhaddon,  340; 
temple  of,  sacked  by  the  Scyth- 
ians, 423. 

Ashdod,  one  of  the  five  Philistine 
cities,  150;  popular  rising  in, 
against  Assyria,  under  Sargon, 
267  ;  besieged  and  taken,  ib. ; 
King  of,  pays  homage  to  Esar- 
haddon, 340 ;  taken  by  Psam- 
metik,  418. 

Asherah,  a  tree-symbol  of  Ash- 
toreth,  1 1 2-1 14. 

Ashtoreth,  the  Canaanitic  moon- 
goddess  and  nature-goddess, 
Greek  Astarte,  equivalent  of 
the  Assyro-Babylonian  Ishtar 
and  Mylitta  or  Belit,  107  ;  es- 
pecially invoked  at  Sidon,  108  ; 
her  worship,  110-114. 

Assyria  proper,  greatest  extent  of, 

3-4. 
Assyrian    Empire,    cradle    of,    3 ; 


normal  extent  and  natural  boun- 
daries of,  65-66 ;  fall  of,  428. 

Assyrians,  their  resemblance  to 
the  Hebrew  in  features,  4;  in 
spirit ;  tendency  towards  mono- 
theism, 4ff. 

Assyriology,  scientific  worth  of, 
proved  by  the  discovery  of  the 
Rock-stele  of  Tiglath-Pileser  I., 
43-44 ;  by  the  decipherment  of 
his  cylinder,  44-46. 

Asshur,  "land  of,"  Assyria,  3; 
"  people  of,"  of  Semitic  race,  ib. 

Asshur,  most  ancient  capital  of 
Assyria,  2» 

Asshur,  the  Assyrians'  supreme 
god,  5  ;  his  name  at  the  head 
of  invocations,  5 ;  his  impor- 
tance as  the  rei^resentative 
national  god,  6 ;  parallel  of 
Asshur  and  Yahveh,  6-10 ;  his 
emblem,  11-15. 

Asshur -akhi-iddin,  see  Esarhad- 
don. 

Asshurbanipal  (Asshur -ban -ha 
bal).  King  of  Assyria,  son  and 
successor  of  Esarhaddon  ;  inau- 
gurated in  his  father's  life- 
time, 345;  brilliant  features  of 
his  reign,  371-373  ;  his  success- 
ful expedition  into  Egypt 
against  Taharka,  374 ;  quells 
the  revolt  of  the  Egyptian  vas- 
sal kings  and  sacks  Thebes, 
376-377 ;  his  relations  with 
Gyges,  King  of  Lydia,  378-382  ; 
his  first  war  with  Elam,  385; 
gains  the  battle  on  the  Ulai", 
388-391 ;  orders  barbarous  ex- 
ecutions and  tortures  of  pris- 
oners, 391  ;  quells  the  rebellion 
of  Shamash-Shumukin,  396 ; 
his  furthur  wars  in  Elam,  397- 
399 ;  sacks  Shushan,  and 
wastes  Elam,  399-401  ;  pacifies 
Bit-Yakin,  406;  his  expedition 
into  Arabia,  408 ;  yokes  four 
captive  princes  to  his  triumphal 
chariot,  409;  last  years  of  his 
reign  obscure  410;  his  palace, 
library,     sculptures,      411-416; 


INDEX. 


437 


his  transformation  by  Greek 
tradition  into  the  effeminate 
tyrant  Sardanapalus,  416. 

Asshur-idil-ili,  King  of  Assyria, 
son  and  successor  of  Asshur- 
banipal,  418. 

Ashur-nadin-sum,  eldest  son  of 
Sennacherib,  made  King  of 
Babylon,  312. 

Asshurnazirpal,  158,  his  "An- 
nals," 159;  his  barbarous  cru- 
elty in  war,  161-162;  his  vari- 
ous campaigns,  164;  his  palace 
at  Kalah,  165;  his  sculptures, 
166;  his  hunts,  168-170. 

Asshur-Uballit,  early  King  of 
Assyria,  his  descent  on  Babylon, 
21  ;  his  expeditions  to  the  N. 
and  N.  W.,  t;]. 

Astarte,  see  Ashtoreth. 

Aushar,  Accadian  name  (most 
ancient)  of  Asshur,  2. 

Atargatis,  the  Hittite  goddess, 
corresponding  to  Ishtar,  wor- 
shipped at  Karkhemish,  35;  by 
the  Philistines,  in  her  temple 
at  Ascalon,  under  the  name  of 
Derketo,  iii,  114,  150;  her 
sanctuary  at  Ephesus,  365-366. 

Attys,  the  son  of  Manes,  the 
Lydian  sun-god,  counterpart  of 
Adonis-Thammuz,  366-367.  I 

Aturia,  ancient  classical  name  of 
Assyria  proper,  3;  its  narrow 
bounds,  ib. 

Ausi,  see  Hoshea. 

Avva,  a  city  of  Syria,  unidenti- 
fied, 249. 

Azariah  (also  Uzziah),  King  of 
Judah,  pays  tribute  to  Tiglath- 
Pileser  II.,  229. 


B. 


Baal  (plural  "  Baalim,"  feminine 
"Baalath"),  meaning  of  the 
word,  107  ;  Canaanitic  equiva-  I 
lent  of  the  Babylonian  "  Bel  and 
Belit,"  116;  priests  of,  at  Jeru- 
salem under  Ahab,  116;  test! 
sacrifice  to,  ordered  by  Elijah,  ih.  ! 


Baal,  King  of  Tyre,  does  homage 
to  Esarhaddon,  341;  rebels 
against  him,  ib.  ;  vanquished 
and  pardoned,  342. 

Baalath,  see  Baal. 

Baal-zebub  (•'  the  Lord  of  Flies  "), 
name  of  the  sun-god  as  wor- 
shipped at  Ekron,  150. 

Baalim,  see  Baal. 

Bab-el-mandeb,  strait  of,  69. 

Babylon,  taken  by  Tukulti-Nineb 
I.,  38  ;  abandoned  by  Merodach 
Baladan,  invites  Sargon,  275; 
captured  and  utterly  destroyed 
by  Sennacherib,  320-321  ;  re- 
built by  Esarhaddon,  336  ;  Sha- 
mash-Shumukin,  viceroy  of, 
347  ;  besieged  and  captured  by 
Asshurbanipal,  396;  Nabopo- 
lassar.  King  of,  427. 

Babylonia,  early  relations  of,  with 
Assyria,  19-21  ;  later  hostile 
attitude  of,  towards  Assyria,  61- 
62. 

Bactria,  a  part  of  ancient  Ariana, 
inhabited  by  Eranians,  351. 

Bagistana  (Behistun),  198. 

Bahrein  Islands,  probable  start- 
ing point  of  the  Hamites  of 
Canaan,  68-69. 

Balawat,  ruins  and  gates  of,  190. 

Bavian,  rock-sculptures  and  in- 
scription   of    Sennacherib     at, 

319- 
Bazu,  a    egion  of  Arabia,  uniden- 
tified ;  invaded  by  Esarhaddon, 

337. 

Behistun,  see  Bagistana. 

Bel,  god  ;  one  of  the  great  Assyro- 
Babylonian  Triad,  17. 

Belit,  the  goddess;  her  funda- 
mental identity  with  Ishtar,  19. 

Belibni,  Assyrian  governor  sent 
to  Bit-Yakin  by  Asshurbanipal, 
406. 

BeJibus.  made  king  of  Babylon  by 
Sennacherib,  299. 

Bel-Marduk,  see  Marduk. 

Benhadad  II.  (Assyrian:  Dadi- 
dri),  king  of  Damascus,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Syrian  league  against 


438 


INDEX. 


Shalmaneser  II.,  179;  his  v?ar 
and  reconciliation  with  Ahba- 
of  Israel,  180;  defeats  Ahab  in 
a  second  war,  182  ;  murdered, 
and  succeeded  by  Hazael,  1S3. 

Benhadad  III.,  king  of  Damascus, 
son  and  successor  of  Hazael, 
defeats  and  humiliates  Judah, 
227—228. 

Berytus,  modern  Beyrout,  one  of 
the  Phoenician  cities,  78. 

Beth-Togarmah,  see  Togarmah. 

Beyrout,  see  Berytus. 

Bhryges,  see  Phrygians. 

Bikni,  Mount,  in  eastern  Media, 
unidentified,  225,  338,  354. 

Bit-Dayaukku,  a  Median  princi- 
pality, 420. 

Bit-Khumri  (House  of  Omri), 
liame  given  by  the  Assyrians 
to  the  kingdom  of  Israel  gen- 
erally, 182-1S3. 

Bit-Yakin,  princes  and  leaders  in 
Chaldea,  172 ;  Merodach  Ba- 
ladan,  prince  of,  237;  subdued 
by  Esarhaddon,  334-335;  ^Y 
Asshurbanipal,  406. 

Boghaz-Keui  in  Cappadocia,  Hit- 
tite  rock-sculptures  at,  364. 

Burna-Buriash,  Babylonian  king 
of  the  Cossasan  dynasty,  20. 

Byblos,  see  Gebal. 


C. 


Canaanites,  their  dispersion  prob- 
ably caused  by  the  shock  of  the 
Elamitic  invasion,  71  ;  early 
populations  found  by  them, 
73  ;  their  sensuous  and  mate- 
rialistic character  reproduced 
in  their  religion,  103-104;  its 
dualism,  105-108 ;  its  connec- 
tion with  the  Babylonian  relig- 
ion, 105,  107  ;  their  peculiar 
nature,  both  sensuous  and  san- 
guinary, 129-136;  orgiastic 
character  of  their  festivals, 
131-132;    their  child-sacrifices, 

Cappadocia,    a    country    on    the 


Upper     Euphrates,      333-337; 

rich  in  Hittite  remains,  364. 
Carisbrooke    Castle,    in    the  Isle 

of  Wight,  built  on  the   site   of 

a  Phoenician  tin-station,  91. 
Carmel,  Mount,  78. 
Carthage  (Kart-PIadascht),  Tyrian 

colony,  133  ;    child-sacrifices  at, 

134-135- 
Cassiterides,  see  "  Tin-Islands." 

Caucasian  Gates,  the  great  pass 

of  the  Caucasus,  383  ; 
Chinziros,  see  Ukinzir. 
Chaldeans  proper — see  Kaldu. 
Cilicia,  a  country  of  Asia   Minor, 

raid   of    Shalmaneser  11,  into, 

Cimmerians  (Assyrian  Gimirrai, 
Hebrew  Corner),  first  appear- 
ance of,  337  ;  their  principal 
seat  in  the  south  of  Russia, 
359  ;  pass  into  Thrace,  retreat- 
ing before  the  Scythians,  359; 
into  Asia  Minor,  across  the 
Bosphorus,  360 ;  destroy  Si- 
nope,  369 ;  rule  and  plunder 
Asia  minor  for  over  a  hundred 
years,  ib. ;  distress  Gyges,  king 
of  Lydia,  377-380 ;  sack  Sar- 
dis,  382. 

Clermont-Ganneau,  the  discov- 
erer of  the  Stele  of  Mesha,  the 
Moabite,  216,  note. 

Cosmogony,  Phoenician,  140. 

Cossaeans,  see  Kasshi, 

Crete,  Greek  island  colonized  by 
Phoenicians,  86; 

Crimea,  Russian  peninsula,  360. 

Cyprus  (Assyrian  Yatnan,  He- 
brew, Kittim),  Greek  island, 
colonized  by  Phoenicians,  86; 
seven  kings  of,  pay  tribute  to 
Sargon,  277  ;  ten  to  Esarhaddon, 

339- 


D. 


Dadidri,  see  Benhadad  II. 
Dagon,   the    Philistine    fish-god; 

his   temple     at    Ascalon,    114- 

115,   150. 


INDEX. 


439 


Dalta,  king  of  Ellip  ;  his  loyalty 
to  Assyria,  265-266 ;  death 
and  disputed  succession  of,  278. 

Damascus,  the  Aramxan  capital  ; 
its  importance  and  duration,  56; 
besieged  by  Shalmaneser  il., 
184;  taken  by  Tiglath-Pileser 
II.,  232;  rises  against  Sargon, 
255. 

Danube  (river),  ancient  Ister, 
360. 

David,  king  of  the  Jews,  the  de- 
liverer of  his  people  and  real 
founder  of  a  national  monarchy, 
151  ;  builds  Jerusalem,  152. 

Dead  Sea,  its  low  level,  42  ; 

Deiokes,  the  reputed  founder  of 
the  Median  kingdom,  419-421  ; 
probable  identity  of  the  name 
with  the  Assyrian  Dayaukku, 
420; 

Derketo,  the  Philistine  fish-god- 
dess, a  form  of  Ashtoreth, 
III;  her  temple  at  Ascalon, 
ib. ;  her  companion,  the  fish- 
god,  Dagon,  114;  mother  of 
the  mythical  Semiramis,  196. 

Dhutmes  III.,  the  Egyptian  con- 
queror, 21  ;  wins  the  battle  of 
Megiddo,  27  ;  receives  tribute 
from  Assyria,  28 ; 

Dibon,  capital  of  Moab,  213. 

Dilmun,  king  of,  sends  tribute  to 
Sargon,  277. 

Djebel,  see  Gebal. 

Dniester,  ancient  Tyras,  a  river 
of  Russia,  363. 

Don,  ancient  Tanais,  a  river  of 
Russia,  359. 

Dualism,  a  conspicuous  feature 
of  the  Canaanitic  religions, 
106-10S. 

Dur-Sharrukin,  founded  bv  Sar- 
gon, 280-283  ;  buildings,'  walls 
and  gates  of,  283-285  ;  artistic 
decoration  of,  285-287;  mixed 
population  of,  288-289, 

Dur-Yakin,  the  capital  of  Bit- 
Yakin,  274  ;  taken  by  Sargon, 
275. 


E. 


Ea,  god,  one  of  the  great   Assyro- 
iJabylonian  Triad,  17. 

Edoin,  king  of,  pays  homage  to 
Esarhaddon,  340. 

Egbatana  (Ecbatana,  Agbatana, 
Hagmatana,  modern  Hama- 
dan),  capital  of  Media,  355; 
fabulous  legend  of  its  founda- 
tion by  Semiramis,  198 ;  re- 
ported to  have  been  built  by 
Deiokes,  420. 

Egypt,  her  long  seclusion,  21-22; 
is  conquered  by  the  Shasus  or 
Hyksos,  24 ;  her  conquests  and 
wars  in  Asia,  26-31  ;  her  reviv- 
al, after  a  long  period  of  de- 
cadence, under  the  Ethiopian 
dynasty,  242 ;  invaded  by 
Esarhaddon,  342-344;  by  As- 
shurbanipal,  yilToll  '■>  shakes 
off  the  yoke  of  Assyria  under 
Psammetik,  395. 

Ekron,  one  of  the  five  Philistine 
cities,  150;  seat  of  the  worship 
of  Baal-Zebub,  ib.  ;  dethrones 
its  king,  Padi,  and  revolts 
against  Assyria,  304. 

Elamitic  invasion,  a  momentous 
turning-point  in  ancient  Ori- 
ental history,  72. 

Elijah,  Hebrew  prophet,  taunts 
the  priests  of  Paal,  116. 

Elishah,  the  Biblical  name  for 
parts  of  Greece,  212-348. 

Elissa,  the  foundress  of  Carthage, 
211. 

Eltekeh,  see  Altakii. 

Emim,  a  pre-Canaanitic  people  of 
Palestine,  72. 

Ephesus,  originally  Hittite  city  in 
Ionia,  364 ;  the  great  sanctu- 
ary of  Atargatis  at,  365-366. 

Eponym  Canon,  or  table  of  Lim- 
mus;     its    uses   in   chronology, 

M7- 
Eran,  or     Iran,   collective   name 
of   all  the  countries,  inhabited 
by    Eranian    nations,    and      of 


440 


INDEX. 


those  nations  themselves,  352 ; 
opposed  to  Turan,  353. 

Esarhaddon  ( Asshur-akhi-iddin), 
king  of  Assyria,  son  and  suc- 
cessor of  Sennacherib,  331-346  ; 
makes  war  against  his  brothers, 
333-335 ;  receives  favorable 
oracles  from  Ishtar  of  Arbela, 
333 ;  subdues  Bit-Yakin,  334- 
346;  rebuilds  Babylon  336; 
leads  an  expedition  into  "  distant 
Media,"  337  ;  repels  the  Gimir- 
rai  (Cimmerians)  in  the  north, 
ib. ;  his  Arabian  campaign, 
337-339  ;  chastises  Sidon  and 
some  districts  of  Syria,  339 ; 
receives  homage  and  tribute 
from  twenty-two  kings  at  Nine- 
veh, 339-340 ;  builds  a  great 
palace  at  Nineveh,  341  ;  quells 
a  revolt  in  Syria,  341-342 ;  his 
Egyptian  campaign,  342-344; 
his  abdication  in  favor  of  his 
son  Asshurbanipal,  345 ;  ap- 
points his  other  son,  Shamash- 
Shumukin,  viceroy  of  Babylon, 
346;  dies,  ib. 

Eshmun,  the  Eighth  Kabir,  143. 

Ethiopian  '  dynasty  in  Egypt, 
founded  by  Shabaka,  242  ;  end 
of,  under  Taharka's  successor, 

375- 
Eulaeos,  see  Ulai. 

Ezekiel,  the  prophet,  his  descrip- 
tion of  Tyre,  95  ;  his  prophe- 
sies, 424,  425,  430,  431. 

F. 

Fravartish,  see  Phraortes. 
G. 

Gades  (Cadiz),  foundation  of,  by 
the  Phoenicians,  68,  90. 

Gagi  (Gog),  a  Scythian  chief,  cap- 
tured, 384. 

Gath,  one  of  the  five  Philistine 
cities,  150. 

Gaza,  one  of  the   five   Philistine 


cities,  150;  king  of,  does  hom- 
age to  Esarhaddon,  340. 

Gebal,  Greek  Byblos,  modern 
Djebel,  one  of  the  great  Phoeni- 
cian cities,  78  ;  its  priestly  char- 
acter, 139;  seat  of  the  worship 
of  Adonis,  141  ;  king  of,  does 
homage  to  Esarhaddon,  340. 

Gibil,  the  fire-god,  absent  from 
Assyrian  pantheon,  16. 

Gimirrai.  see  Cimmerians. 

Gog,  see  Gagi. 

Gomer,  see  Cimmerians. 

Goshen,  land  of,  given  to  Jacob 
and  his  sons,  23. 

Gozan,  a  portion  of  Mesopota- 
mia, 249. 

Gugu,  king  of  Ludi,  see  Gyges, 
king  of  Lvdia. 

Gyges,  king  of  Lydia  (Assyrian 
Gugu),  sends  an  embassy  to  As- 
shurbanipal to  entreat  his  aid 
against  the  Cimmerians,  378, 
379;  conspires  with  Psammetik 
against  him,  3S0;  perishes  in 
the  struggle  against  the  Cim- 
merians, ib. 


H. 


Habor,  see  Khabour. 

Hadidri,  see  Benhadad  II. 

Hagmatana,  see  Egbatana. 

Haldi,  the  "great  god"  of  the 
'      Alarodians,  263,  264. 

Hamadan,  see  Egbatana. 

Hamath,  Ilittite  kingdom  in  Syria, 
179;  a  member  of  the  Syrian 
league  against  Shalmaneser  XL, 
ib.;  rises  against  Sargon,  255. 

Hazael  (Khazaihi),  a  Syrian  officer 
murders  Benhadad  H.  and  suc- 
ceeds him,  183;  is  defeated  by 
Shalmaneser  II.,  184. 

Herodotus,  the  Greek  historian, 
108,  354,  359,  362,  417,  419,  422. 

Hezekiah  (Hizkia),  Kingof  Judah, 
abstains  from  conspiring  against 
Assyria.  254;  his  sickness.  270  ; 
his  wealth,  ib. ;  receives  Mero- 
dach  Baladan's   embassy,  271  ; 


INDEX. 


441 


his  imprudence,  ib.;  openly  re- 
volts against  Sennacherib,  304  ; 
submits  and  sends  tribute,  306 ; 
is  delivered  from  the  Assyrian 
army,  307-310. 

Hi  neks.  Dr.,  one  of  the  decipher- 
ers of  Tigiath-Pileser's  cylin- 
der, 45. 

Hiram,  King  of  Tyre,  friend  of 
David  and  Solomon,  154;  fur- 
nishes men  and  materials  to 
build  the  temple  of  Yahveh  and 
Solomon's  palace,  ib. 

Hittites  (Egyptian  "  Khetas,"  As- 
syrian "  Khatti  "),  a  great  people, 
29;  their  wars  against  Dhut- 
mes  HI.  and  Ramses  H.,  29-30  ; 
of  Hamitic  stock,  30  ;  their  first 
headquarters,  ib.;  signs  of  their 
northern  origin,  31  ;  their  de- 
cline, 33 ;  their  culture  and  re- 
ligion, 35-36 ;  their  early  colli- 
sions with  Assyria,  37 ;  sup- 
planted by  the  Aramaeans,  56- 

.57 ;  148. 

Hoshea  (Ausi),  King  of  Israel, 
succeeds  Pekah,  231  ;  conspires 
against  Assyria,  246. 

Hyksos,  see  Shasus. 


I. 


laubid,  or  Ilubid,  upstart  king  of 
Hamath,  255  ;  taken  and  flayed 
alive  by  Sargon,  256. 

lahuhazi  mat  laudai,  see  Ahaz  of 
Judah. 

Ibriz,  in  Cilicia,  Hittite  rock- 
sculptures  at,  364. 

Ilubid,  see  laubid. 

Ilulai,  King  of  Babvlon,  possibly 
identical  with  Shalmaneser  IV., 
240. 

Indabigash  dethrones  Tammaritu 
and  usurps  the  crown  of  Elam, 
395  ;  perishes  in  a  revolt,  398. 

Indo-European  race,  its  great 
qualities,  351. 

Indo-Germanic  race,  see  Aryan 
race. 

Ir-Samirina,  see  Saniaira. 


Isaiah,  the  Hebrew  prophet, 
warns  the  king  of  Judah  against 
trusting  to  Egypt,  243,  254; 
rebukes  Hezekiah  for  his  impru- 
dence with  regard  to  Merodach 
Baladan's  embassy,  271-272; 
comforts  him  at  Sennacherib's 
approach,  309. 

Ishmi-Dagon,  earliest  known  king 
of  Asshur,  2. 

Ishtar,  goddess  of  love  and  of 
war,  rules  the  planet  Venus,  18  ; 
"of  Nineveh,"  "of  Arbela," 
ib. :  her  fundamental  identity 
with  Belit,  19;  with  Ashtoreth, 
107  ;  the  favorite  deity  of  Esar- 
haddon,  333 ;  her  message  to 
Asshurbanipal,  386-387. 

Israel,  kingdom  of,  secedes  from 
the  house  of  David,  157. 

Israelites  invade  Moab,  126. 

Ister,  modern  Danube,  360. 

J- 

Jacob  settles  in  Egypt  with  his 
family,  23. 

Japhetic  race,  see  Aryan  or  Indo 
European  race. 

Jehovah,  see  Yahveh. 

Jehu  usurps  the  crown,  184 ;  pays 
tribute  to  Shalmaneser  II.,  185 
-187. 

Jeremiah,  a  Hebrew  prophet,  on 
the  Scythian  invasion,  370,  424. 

Jerusalem,  the  political  and  relig- 
ious centre  of  the  Jewish  na- 
tion, the  only  holy  place  of 
Yahveh,  152;  the  temple  at, 
built  by  Phoenician  artists,  154- 
155;  fortified  by  Hezekiah,  304 
-305;  siege  and  deliverance  of, 
under  Sennacherib,  307-309. 

Jews,  tribes  of,  gathered  into  a 
nation  under  David  and  Solo- 
man,  151-153;  oppressed  by 
Solomon,  154;  separate  into 
two  kingdoms  after  Solomon's 
death,  157. 

Joel,  a  Hebrew  prophet,  256. 

Jonah  and  his  ]")reaching  at  Nine- 
veh not  mentioned  on  the  mon« 


442 


INDEX. 


uments,  208  ;  possible  explana- 
tion of  the  story,  209-210. 

Jonathan,  the  son  of  Saul,  151. 

Joseph,    his    brilliant    career    in 

Egypt,  25.  ,  ,      , 

Judah,  kingdom  of,  ruled  by  the 
house  of  David,  157. 


K. 


Kabirim,    the    seven    Phoenician 

deities,  142-143. 
Kaboul,  a  part  of  ancient  Ariana, 

inhabited  by  Eranians,  351. 
Kadesh,  Battle  of,  30 ;  one  of  the 

Hittite  capitals,  fb. 
Kalah,  one  of  the  three  Assyrian 
capitals,  3 ;  founded  by  Shal- 
maneser  1.,  37  ;  rebuilt  and 
embellished  by  Asshurnazirpal, 
164-166. 

Kaldu  (Chaldea  proper),  strict 
definition  of  the  name,  170; 
princes  of,  172  ;  their  ambition 
and  rebellious  attitude  towards 
Assyria,  172,  173. 

Kapht'or,  uncertain  island,  per- 
haps Crete,  149. 

Kar-Dunyash,  Babylon,  20. 

Karkha,  the  royal  citadel  of 
Mesha,  king  of  Moab,  216. 

Karkhemish,  principal  Hittite 
capital,  31  ;  important  and 
wealthy  commercial  station, 
148 ;  final  conquest  of,  by  Sar- 
gon,  261. 

Kar  Nineb,  fortress  built  by  Sar- 
gon  in  the  Zagros  lands,  262. 

Kar-Sharrukin,  fortress  built  by 
Sargon  in  the  Zagros  lands,  262. 

Karkar,  battle  of,  181. 

Kart-Hadascht,  see  Carthage. 

Kasshi  (Cossceans),  Sennacherib's 
campaign  against  the,  300. 

Khabour,  or  Habor,  "  the  river  of 
Gozan,"  249. 

Khaluli,  battle  of,  318-319. 

Khatti,  see  Hittites. 

Khatti,  land  of,  general  name  for 
Syria,  irrespective  of  races,  148. 


Khauzer,  see  Khuzur. 

Khazailu,  see  Hazael. 

Khetas,  see  Hittites. 

Khemosh,  the  god  of  Moab,  126, 
205-217. 

"  Kherem,"  "devoting"  "cap- 
tured cities  to  destruction,"  138. 

Khosr,  see  Khuzur. 

Khumljanigash,  king  of  El  am, 
makes  alliance  with  Merodach 
Baladan  against  Assyria,  259. 

Khudur  Lagamar,  early  Elamite 
king,  25. 

Khudur  Nankhundi,  early  Elam- 
ite king,  25. 

Khuzur,  now  Khosr  or  Khauzer, 
stream  that  flowed  through 
Nineveh,  326. 

Kileh-Sherghat,  hamlet  on  the 
site  of  Asshur,  2. 

Kimmerians,  see  Cimmerians. 

Kings  of  Assyria,  their  priestly 
character,  lo-ii ;  sacredness  of 
their  persons,  14-16. 

Kings  of  Egypt,  their  Asiatic  ex- 
peditions, 26-30. 

Kiriath-Sepher  ("  the  City  of 
Books "),  a  city  in  Phoenicia, 
144. 

Kir-Haresheth,  a  city  of  Moab, 
126. 

Kish,  a  city  in  Babylonia,  298. 

Kittim,  see  Cyprus. 

Kour,  ancient  Kyros,  river,  383. 

Kurdistan,  see  Nairi. 

Kyaxares  (Uvakshatara),  king  of 
Media,  son  and  successor  of 
Phraortes,  421  ;  invades  As- 
syria, 422  ;  returns  to  Media  in 
consequence  of  the  Scythian 
invasion,  ib. ;  frees  Media  from 
the  Scythians,  427  ;  enters  an 
alliance  with  Nabopolassar  of 
Babylon,  ib.\  unites  with  him 
to  besiege  Nineveh,  428. 

Kybele,    the    Lydian    nature-god- 
dess, 367  ;    myth  of  her  love  to 
Attys,  ib. 
Kydnos,  a  river  in  Cilicia. 
Kyros,  modern  Kour,  river,  383. 


INDEX. 


443 


LaiHe,  an  Arab  chieftain,  kindly 
treated  by  Esariiaddon,  t^-^^. 

Lakhish,  a  fortress  of  Judah,  be- 
sieged and  taken  by  Sennacli- 
erib,  305-307. 

Lebanon,  Mount,  meaning  of  the 
name,  ']%. 

Limmu,  or  Eponyms,  Assyrian 
magistrates  after  whom  the 
years  were  named ;  importance 
of  the  institution  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  reliable  chronol- 
ogy, 146. 

Lydia,  a  country  in  Asia  Minor, 
364 ;  population  of,  principally 
Hittite,  366;  early  traditions  of, 
ib.;  overrmi  by'  Cimmerians, 
378-382. 

M. 

Madai,  see  Medes. 

Madaktu,  one  of  the  great  cities  of 
Elam,  401. 

Madyes,  son  of  Protothyes  the 
Scythian  king,  422;  killed  at  a 
banquet  by  Kyaxares,  427. 

Magog,  the  Hebrew  name  for  the 
Scythians  of  Sacasene,  383. 

Manasseh,king  of  Judah,  son  and 
successor  of  Ifezekiah,  does 
homage  to  Esarhaddon,  340; 
rebels  against  him,  341  ;  cap- 
tured and  pardoned,  341-342. 

Manes,  the  supreme  god  of  the 
Lydians,  366. 

Marduk,  successor  of  INTeridug, 
chief  god  of  later  Babylon,  17; 
ruler  of  the  planet  Jupiter  in 
Assyria,  ib. 

Marduk-habal-iddin,  see  Mero- 
dach  Baladan. 

Masios,  Mount,  continuation  of 
Taurus.  30. 

Medes  (Madai)  subdued  bv  Ra- 
man-Nirari  Til.,  194;  send  trib- 
ute to  Sennacherib,  302 ;  to 
Esarhaddon,  337 ;  the  three 
kinds  of,  353-354 ;    their  loose 


political  constitution,  354;  they 
spread     through     the     Zagros, 
355 ;  unite  into  a  kingdom,  419- 
421. 
Megiddo,  battle  of,  27. 
Melkarth,   or    Baal-Melkarth,  the 
Phoenician     sun-god,    protector 
of    westward     navigation,    90; 
pillars    of,    ib.  ;    specially  wor 
shipped  at  Tyre,  108  ;  meaning 
of  the  name,  ib. ;   temple  of,  at 
Tyre,  ib. 
Memphis,  one  of  the  capitals  of 

Egypt,  373. 
Menahem,    King    of    Israel    (As- 
syrian ;        Minihimmi-ir-Samir- 
ina),  pays    tribute   to    Tiglath- 
Pileser  11.,  227. 
Meridug.  see  Marduk. 
Merodach       Baladan      (Marduk- 
Habal-Iddin)  of  Bit-Yakin,  237  ; 
does    homage     to     Tiglath-Pi- 
leser     II.,    at      Sapiya,      238; 
makes     alliance     with     Khum- 
banigash,  King  of  Elam,  against 
Sargon,     259;      with      Sutruk- 
Nankhundi,  successor  of  Khum- 
banigash,    269 ;    sends    an    em- 
bassy   to     Hezekiah,    King    of 
Judah,   270-272;   opens   hostili- 
ties against  Sargon,  273  ;  is  de- 
feated and  flies  into  Elam,  273; 
returns     to     Dur-Yakin,     274 ; 
flies   again,  275;    reap])ears  on 
Sennacherib's      accession,      as 
King   of  Babylon,   298;    is  de- 
feated and   flies   to    Bit-Yakin, 
299;   retires  to  Nagitu,  on  the 
shore  of  Elam,  312. 

Mesha,  King  of  ^Toab,  sacrifices 
his  eldest  son,  126-127;  Stele 
of,  213-217, 

Migrations  of  races ;  obscurity  of 
the  subject,  70-71. 

Minihimmi-ir-Samirina,  see  Men- 
nhcm,  King  of  Israel. 

Moab,  kingdom  of,  126,  157; 
Mesha,  king  of,  126-127;  212- 
2T7  ;  king  of,  does  homage  to 
Esarhaddon,  340. 

Moloch,   meaning   of    the    name, 


444 


INDEX. 


107 ;  Canaanitic  sun-god,  ib.; 
the  fierce  sun-god,  115;  wor- 
ship of,  distuiguished  by  hu- 
man sacrifices,  133;  child-sacri- 
fices to,  at  Carthage,  134-136. 

Moriah,  Mount,  temple  of  Yah- 
veh  on,  153. 

Muzazir,  a  kingdom  of  Nairi,  264; 
conquered  by  Sargon,  264. 

Muzri,  ancient  city,  on  the  site  of 
which  Dur-Sharrukin  was  built, 
2S0. 

Myths,  Canaanitic,  difficult  to  un- 
ravel, 109-110;  of  Baal,  his 
sleep  and  his  travels,  116;  Aiti- 
ological,  126. 

N. 

Nabopolassar  (Nabu-pal-uzzur) 
becomes  king  of  Babylon,  427  ; 
enters  an  alliance  with  Kyax 
ares,  ib. ;  unites  with  him  to 
besiege  and  destroy  Nineveh, 
428. 

Nabu-bel-Zikri  of  Bit-Yakin,  a 
grandson  of  Merodach  Baladan, 
rises  against  Asshurbanipal, 
397  ;  commits  suicide,  402-403; 
his  body  treated  with  indignity, 

404. 

Nabu-khudur-uzzur,  see  Nebu- 
chadrezzar. 

Nabu-pal-uzzur,  see  Nabopolas- 
sar. 

Nasjitu,  a  city  of  Elam  by  the 
Gulf,  312. 

Nahid-Marduk,  a  son  of  Mero- 
dach Baladan,  submits  to  Esar- 
haddon,  335. 

Nahr-el-Kelb,  rock-sculptures  of, 
344;  stele  of  Esarhaddon  at, 
ib. 

Nahum,  a  Hebrew  prophet,  his 
prophecv  against  Assyria,  429. 

Nairi,  lands  of,  geographical  i)o- 
sition,  43 ;  campaign  of  Tig- 
lath-Pileser  I.  in,  47-54  ;   great 

•  outbreak  in,  under  Sargon,  260. 

Nebi-Yunus,  mound  of,  331-340. 

Nebosumiskun,    a   son   of    Mero-: 


dach    Baladan,    taken    prisoner 
in  the  battle  of  Khaluli,  318. 

Nebuchadrezzar  ( Nabu-khudur- 
uzzur),  son  of  Nabopolassar, 
married  to  Amytis,  daughter  of 
Kyaxares,  428. 

Neciio,  prince  of  Sais,  set  by 
Esarhaddon  over  the  other 
nineteen  tributary  kings  of 
Egypt,  343;  conspires  with  Ta- 
harka  against  Asshurbanipal 
and  is  carried  captive  to  Nine- 
veh, 374  ;  is  set  free  and  returns 
to  Sais,  375  ;  dies  soon  after  the 
sack  of  Thebes,  380. 

Nineveh,  the  last  capital  of  As- 
syria, rebuilt  and  embellished 
by  Sennacherib,  325  ;  besieged 
by  Kyaxares,  422 ;  fall  of,  428. 

Ninvas,  son  of  Ninus  and  Semir- 
amis,  198,  200. 

Ninus,  mythical  founder  of  the 
Assyrian  Empire,  196. 

Niphates,  Mons,  northern  boun- 
dary of  Assyria  under  Tiglath- 
Pileser  I.,  65. 

Nipur  Mountains,  a  portion  of 
the  Nairi  range,  313. 

No-amon,  one  of  the  names  of 
Thebes,  430. 

O. 

Obelisk,  Shalmaneser  II.'s  black, 

185-187. 
Omri,   father     of   Ahab ;      builds 

Samaria,  182. 
Onnes,   or   Cannes,  first   husband 

of  the  mythical  Semiramis,  196. 
Oppert,   Mr.    Julius,   one    of   the 

decipherers      of      Tiglath-Pile- 

ser's  cylinder,  45. 
"  Orgiastic  "    religions  and    rites, 

131  ;  meaning  of  the  word,  132. 
Orontes,  river  in  Syria,  30,  178. 


P. 


Padi,  King  of  Ekron,  devoted  to 
Assyria,  dethroned  and  deliv- 
ered   to    Hezekiah    of    Judah, 


INDEX, 


445 


304 ;     restored    to   his   throne, 
306. 

Pakaha,  see  Pekah. 

Pakhe  usurps  the  crown  of  Ehim 
from  Ummanalclash  II.,  406; 
is  yoked  to  Asshurbanipal's 
triumphal  chariot  with  three 
more  captive  princes,  409. 

Palaces  of  Asshurnazirpal  at 
Kalah,  165-170;  of  Sargon  at 
Dur-Sharrukin,  283-287  ;  of 
Sennacherib  at  Nineveh,  327- 
330;  of  Asshurbanipal  410- 
416. 

Palestine,  derivation  of  the  name, 
33 ;  pre-Canaanitic  populations 
of,  73-76. 

Pantheon,  Assyrian,  16-19 

Paphlagonia,  a  country  of  Asia 
Minor,  369. 

Paritya,  a  son  of  Gagi,  the 
Scythian  chieftain,  422. 

Patesis,  king-priests,  2, 

Pekah  (Pakaha),  son  of  Remal- 
iah,  murders  and  succeeds  Pe- 
kaih,  king  of  Israel,  and  makes 
alliance  with  Syria,  229 ;  assas- 
sinated, 232. 

Pekaiat,  son  and  successor  of 
Menahem  of  Israel,  murdered 
and    succeeded  by  Pekah,    229. 

Pelishtim,  see  Philistines.  I 

Philistines    (Pelishtim),  powerful; 
nation  of  Syria,  35 ;  their  con- 
federation of  five   cities,    150;' 
their    long    conflict     with    the  i 
Jews,  151.  j 

Phoenicians,  their  wealth,  67-6S  ; 
their     origin     and    migrations,  j 
6S-70 ;  their  earliest  race-name, 
69 ;    their    country  and   cities, 
76-So;  their  politics   and   gov-, 
ernment,  78 ;    their   industries, 
81;  their  navigation,  83  ;  their 
colonies  and    trading  stations, 
83-84 ;     their    slave-trade    and 
barter-trade,  85  ;  their  colonies 
on  Greek  islands,  85-86;  their 
voyages  for  tin,  86-92  ;  for  am-  ! 
ber,  92-93  ;  their  caravan  trade,  | 
93-94  ;    their  great  wealth  and  ; 


luxury,  94-96;  their  intellect- 
ual and  moral  character,  96- 
97  ;  their  lack  of  inventiveness 
and  originality,  97-99 ;  their 
great  genius  for  business  and 
money-making,  99  ;  their  his- 
torical mission,  99-102;  carry 
their  worship  to  Greece  and 
Italy,  144. 

Phraortes  (Travartish),  King  of 
Media,  reputed  son  and  succes- 
sor of  Deiokes,  421  ;  his  unsuc- 
cessful invasion  of  Assyria  and 
death,  ib. 

Phryges,  see  Phrygians. 

Phrygia,  a  country  of  Asia  Minor, 
anciently  ruled  by  Hittites, 
367  ;  later  overrun  by  Aryans, 
ib. 

Phrygians,  an  important  branch 
of  the  Aryan  race,  367. 

Phrygo-Thracian  nations,  368. 

Phut,  see  Puna. 

"  Pillars  of  Melkarth,"  90. 

Pre-Canaanitic  populations  of 
Syria,  73-75;  probably  Turan- 
ian, 75-76.  _ 

Proto-Armenians,  see  Alarodians. 

Protothyes,  a  Scythian  chieftain, 
422. 

Psammetik,  King  of  Sais,  son  and 
successor  of  Necho,  draws 
Gyges  of  Lydia  into  an  alliance 
against  Asshurbaniixil,  380 ; 
becomes  King  of  all  Egypt  and 
refuses  allegiance  tc  Asshur- 
banipal, 395;  his  long  wars  in 
Syria,  418,  423;  stops  the 
Scythian  invasion  bv  bribes, 
424. 

Pul  or  Phul,  see  Tiglath-Pileser 
II. 

Puna  (Punt,  Phut,  Put),  Hamitic 
tribe,  probable  ancestors  of 
the  PhaMiicians,  69. 

Punt,  see  Puna. 

Purple  dye,  invented  and  monopo- 
lized by  the  Phoenicians,  81-82  ; 
fisheries,  82 ;  navigation  in 
pursuit  of  purple-mussel,  82- 
83;     purple-mussel    first   occa- 


446 


INDEX. 


sion  of  colonization,  83-34 ;  of 
prosperity  of  Greek  islands,  86. 

Put,  see  Puna. 

Pygmalion,  King  of  Tyre,  211. 


R. 


Ra,  modern  Volga,  359. 

Raman-Nirari  III.,  son  and  suc- 
cessor of  Shamshi-Raman  III.  ; 
his  long  reign  and  successful 
wars,  191-192  ;  his  queen,  Sham- 
muramat,  194  -  195 ;  their 
names  jointly  mentioned  in  a 
dedication  of  some  statues  of 
Nebo,  202. 

Ramses  II.,  the  Egyptian  con- 
queror, 29-30. 

Raphia,  battle  of,  between  Sargon 
and  Shabaka,  2  58. 

Rawlinson,  Sir  Henry,  one  of 
the  decipherers  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser's  cylinder,  45. 

Remaliah,  see  Pekah. 

Rezin,  King  of  Syria,  makes 
alliance  with  Pekah,  King  of 
Israel,  against  Judah,  229-230  ; 
besieged  in  Damascus  and  put 
to  death,  233. 


S. 


Sacasene,  a  region  south  of  the 
Caucasus,  occupied  by  Scyth- 
ians, 383. 

Sacrifice,  original  meaning  of 
the  word,  118;  different 
classes  of,  1 18-120;  two  modes 
of,  burnt  offering  and  consecra- 
tion, T  20-1 2 1  ;  to  consist  of 
perfect  victims  or  offerings, 
122  ;  most  lavish  when  prompt- 
ed by  fear,  123;  human,  a  log- 
ical necessity,  123-124;  com- 
mon to  all  religions  in  remote 
antiquity,  and  considered  a 
divine  institution,  124-126, 
127  ;  legends  connected  with 
abolition  of  human  sacrifices, 
128-129;  child-sacrifices  at 
Carthage,    132-135;  at  Jerusa- 


lem, 135;  forbidden  by  Ro- 
mans, 136. 

Saida,  see  Sidon. 

Sais,  an  Egyptian  city,  344 ; 
Necho,     hereditary    prince    of, 

Saki  or  Sakhi,  see  Scythians. 

Samaria,  capital  of  Israel,  built 
by  Omri,  182 ;  attacked  by 
Shalmaneser  IV.,  247  ;  taken  by 
Sargon,  247;    rises  against  him, 

-55- 
Samaritans,    later ;    their     mixed 

origin,  249-250. 

Sanchonialho,   Phoenician  priest: 

"Fragments"      of,     125,      139, 

143- 
Sapiya,  capital  of  Ukinzir's  Chal 

dean    principality,    taken    and 

sacked   bv  Tiglath-Pileser    II., 


237 


Merodach  Baladan  does 


homage  at,  237-238. 

Sarakos,  last  King  of  Assyria, 
named  by  the  Greeks,  418. 

Sardanapalus,  see  Asshurbanipal. 

Sardis,  capital  of  Lydia,  364; 
sacked  by  Cimmerians,  382. 

Sargon  (Sharru  Kenu),  King  of 
Assyria,  takes  Samaria,  247  ; 
character  of  his  reign  and 
wars,  251-254;  crushes  the  ris- 
ing in  the  \Yest,  255-256; 
marches  against  Shabaka,  256; 
defeats  him  at  Raphia,  258; 
his  campaign  against  Merodach 
Baladan,  272-276;  receives  trib- 
ute from  seven  kings  of  Cy- 
prus, 278 ;  from  the  King  of 
Dilmun,  ib.  ;  settles  the  dispute 
between  the  sons  of  Dalta, 
King  of  Ellip,  278  ;  builds  Uur- 
Sharrukin,  280-289 ;  his  wise 
rule  and  care  of  his  people,  291- 
294  ;  his  assassination,  294. 

Saul,  King  of  the  Jews,  151. 

Sayce,  Professor  A.  H. — his 
researches  about  the  Hittites, 
36,  205,  365. 

Scythians  invade  Southern  Rus- 
sia and  drive  the  Cimmerians 
into   Thrace   and   Asia    Minor, 


INDEX. 


447 


359-360;  occupy  the  regions  by 
the  river  Kyros,  383;  descend 
into  Asia  Minor,  ib. ;  invade 
Media,  422;  descend  into  Syria, 
423 ;  expelled  by  Kyaxares, 
427. 

Scyths,  see  Scythians. 

Semiraniis  (Assyrian:  Shammu- 
ramat),  mythical  legend  of, 
193-202. 

Sennacherib  (Sin-akhi-irib),  King 
of  Assyria,  son  and  successor 
of  Sargon,  295-330 ;  his  first 
campaign  against  Babylon  and 
Merodach  Baladan,  29S  ;  in- 
vades EUip  and  receives  trib- 
ute from  the  "  distant  Medes," 
300-302  ;  his  unsuccessful  oani- 
paign  into  Syria  and  against 
Hezekiah  of  Judah,  303-311; 
sends  to  summon  and  besiege 
Jerusalem,  307-310;  encoun- 
ters Taharka  at  AUaku,  310; 
is  forced  by  a  pestilence  to  leave 
Jerusalem  and  Syria,  309-311  ; 
his  second  campaign  against 
Babylonia,  31 1-3 13;  his  cam- 
paign into  the  Nipur  Mou  1- 
tains,  313;  his  last  cam])aign 
against  Babylonia,  and  Ela  n, 
315-322;  gains  the  victory  at 
Khaluli,  318-319;  captures  and 
utterly  destroys  Babylon,  320- 
321 ;  is  reported  to  have  found- 
ed the  city  of  Tarsus  in  Cilicia, 
322 ;  dies,  murdered  by  two  of 
his  sons,  ib. ;  his  constructiDns 
and  improvements  at  Nineveh, 
322-326;  his  palace,  326-3 p. 

Sesostris,  Greek  name  of  Ram- 
ses [[.,  364. 

Shabaka  (the  So  or  Soh  of  the  ! 
Bible),  the  founder  of  the  Ethi- 
opian dynastv  in  Egvpt,  242  ;  ■ 
arouses  the  hopes  of  the  Syr- 1 
ian  nations  subject  to  Assyria,  ; 
243;    defeated  at  Raphia,  258. 

Shalmaneser    I.  founds  Kalah.  y]. 

Shalmaneser    II.,  his  long  warlike 
reign,    175-176;  his    campaigns 


in  Western  Syris,  178-185; 
his  black  obelisk,  185-187. 

Shalmaneser  III.,  son  and  suc- 
cessor of  Raman-Nirari  III. ; 
his  .ars  in  Nairi  and  Urartu, 
203-206.- 

Shalmaneser  IV.  succeeds  Tiglath- 
Pileser  II.,  239;  besieges  Tyre, 
240,  242-245;  besieges  Sama- 
ria, 246. 

Shamash-Raman,  early  Assyrian 
King,  son  of  Ishmi-Dagan,  2. 

Shamash-vShumukin,  younger  son 
of  Esarhaddon,  appointed  vice- 
roy of  Babylon,  346;  implores 
Asshurbanipal's  assistance 

against  Urtaki,  King  of  Elam, 
385  ;  conspires  against  Asshur- 
banipal  and  organizes  a  vast 
coalition  against  him,  392-393  ; 
besieged  in  Babylon  by  Asshur- 
banipal  and  perishes  in  the 
conflagration,  396. 

Shammuramat,  see  Semiramis. 

Shamshi-Ranian  III.,  son  and  sue 
cessor  of  Shalmaneser  II.,  191. 

Sharru-Kenu,  see  Sargon.  Mean- 
ing of  the  name,  251. 

Shasus,  meaning  of  the  word,  24  ; 
invade  and  conquer  Egypt,  ib. 

Shepherd  kings,  see  Shasus. 

Shushan  (Susa),  capital  of  Elam, 
sacked  by  Asshurbanipal,  399- 
400. 

Shushinak,  supreme  god  of  Elam  ; 
his  statue  carried  off  to  Assyria 
by  Asshurbanipal,  400. 

Sidon,  modern  Saida,  first  Phoe- 
nician capital,  70,  78,80,  81 ;  re- 
volts against  Esarhaddon  and  is 
destroyed,  339. 

Simmas,  foster-father  of  the  myth- 
ical Semiramis,  196. 

Sinjar  Hills,  limestone  ridge  in 
Upper  Mesopotamia,  i. 

Sinope,  Greek  colony  on  the  Black 
Sea,  destroyed  by  the  Cim- 
merians, 369. 

Smyrna,  Ilittite  rock-sculptures, 
between  Sardis  and,  362, 


448 


INDEX. 


So  or  Soh,  see  Shabaka. 

Solomon,  son  of  David,  builds 
temple  of  Yahveh  on  Mount 
Moriah,  153;  lays  heavy  bur- 
dens on  the  Jews,  154;  his  pol- 
icy of  conciliation  with  his 
neighbors  and  its  taital  results, 
i56._ 

Somali  coast,  69. 

"  Stele,"  meaning  of  the  word, 
16;  Rock-stele  of  Tiglath-Pile- 
ser  I,,  43-44  ;  of  Esarhaddon  at 
Nahr-ei-Kelb,  344. 

Sur,  see  Tyre. 

Susa,  see  Shushan. 

Sutekh,  Hittite  supreme  god,  35. 

Sutruknankhundi,  successor  of 
Khumbanigash,  and  ally  of  Mer- 
odach  Baiadan,  270;  abandons 
his  cause,  274. 

Suzub,  Chaldean  king  of  Babylon 
after  Merodach-Baladan,  372 ; 
buys  the  help  of  Umman-Alinan, 
king  of  Elam,  316-317;  is 
routed  in  the  battle  of  Khaluli, 
318-319. 

Sydyk  ("the  Just"),  one  of  the 
Kabirim,  143. 


T. 


Taharka  (also  Tirhaka,  Assyrian 
Tarku),  king  of  Egypt,  conspires 
with  the  Syrian  kings,  302; 
defeated  by  Esarhaddon,  343  ; 
rises     against      Asshurbanipal, 


374;  is  defeated  and  flies  to 
Kush,  375;  conspires  with  the 
Egyptian  vassal  kings,  ib.;  dies, 

376. 

Talbot,  Mr.  H.  Fox,  one  of  the 
decipherers  of  Tigiath-Pileser's 
cylinder,  45, 

Tammaritu  of  Elam,  Urtaki's 
youngest  son,  cuts  off  Teum- 
man's  head  in  the  battle  on  the 
Ulai,  391  ;  dethrones  Ummani- 
gash  and  becomes  king  of  F^am, 
395  >  joins  Shamash-Shumukin 
against  Asshurbanipal,  395;  de- 
throned by  Indabigash  and  flies 


to  Nineveh,  396;  replaced  on 
the  throne  of  Elam  by  Asshur- 
banipal, 399;  revolts  again  and 
is  carried  captive  to  Nineveh, 
399-400  ;  yoked  to  Asshurban- 
ipal's  triumphal  chariot  with 
three  more  captive  princes,  410. 

Tana'is,  modern  Don,  360. 

Tarku,  see  Taharka. 

Tarshish  (corrupted  name,  Tar- 
tessus),  extravagant  accounts 
of,  87-88,  349. 

"  Tarshish-ships,"  89,  94. 

Tarsos,  a  city  in  Cilicia,  reported 
to  have  been  founded  by  Sen- 
nacherib, 323. 

Tartessus,  see  Tarshish. 

Taurus,  Mount,  30. 

Teumman,  king  of  Elam,  brother 
and  successor  of  Urtaki,  con- 
tinues hostilities  against  As- 
shurbanipal, 387  ;  defeated  and 
killed  in  the  battle  on  the  Ulai, 

389-392. 

Thammuz,  see  Adonis. 

Thebes,  one  of  the  capitals  of 
Egypt,  sacked  by  Asshurban- 
ipal, 376. 

Thrace,    modern     Bulgaria     and 


Roumelia,  361. 


Thraco-Phrygian  nations,  368. 

Tiberius,  a  Boman  Emperor, 
136. 

Tiglath-Pileser  I.  (Tukulti-pale- 
sharra),  his  cylinder  and  its  de- 
cipherment, 44-46 ;  his  cam- 
paign against  the  Hittites,  47  ; 
in  the  land  of  Nai'ri,  47-54 ; 
against  the  "  Aramaean  River- 
land,"  56  ;  his  pursuits  in  peace, 
57-58  ;  his  love  of  sport,  58-59  ; 
his  visit  toArvad,  60;  his  un- 
successful wars  against  Baby- 
lonia, 59-62. 

Tiglath-Pileser  11.  probably  a 
usurper,  207  ;  identical  with  the 
Phul  or  Pul  of  the  Bible,  207- 
208;  policv  of,  219;  his  cam- 
paigns in  the  north,  east  and 
south,  224-225,  226-236;  re- 
ceives the  homage  of  Merodach. 


INDEX. 


449 


Baladan   and  other  princes  at 
Sapiya,  237-238 ;  dies,  239. 

Tin,  essential  ingredient  of  bronze, 
86;  Plioenician  travels  in  search 
of,  87-92 ;  overland  route 
throusfh  France  for  the  trans- 
port  of,  89. 

"Tin-Islands"  (Greek  Oassiter- 
ides),  first  known  name  of  the 
Enfjlish  channel  islands,  88. 

Tirhaka,  see  Taharka. 

Tiushpa  the  Gimirrai,  the  Cim- 
merian chieftain,  repulsed  un- 
der Esarhaddon,  337. 

Togarmah,  the  son  of  Gomer, 
represents  the  Armenian  di- 
vision of  the  Thraco-Phrygian 
race,  368. 

Tophet,  valley  of,  near  Jerusalem, 
devoted  to  the  worship  of  Baal 
and  to  human  sacrifices,  135. 

Tsor,  ses  Tyre. 

Tukulti-Nineb,  son  of  Shalmane- 
ser  [.  conquers  Bibyloii,  38; 
loses  his  signet  ring  which  is 
recov^ered  bv  Sennacherib,  ib. 

Tukulti-Nineb  II.,  15S. 

Tukulti-palesharra,  see  Tiglath- 
Pileser. 

Turan,  collective  name  of  all  the 
Asiatic  nations  of  Turanian 
race,  as  opposed  to  Eran,  352. 

Turcomsn,  of  the  Turanian  race, 
inhabitants  of  Turkestan,  352. 

Tyras,  modern  Dniester,  361. 

Tyre  (original  nam:  :  Tsor,  mod- 
ern Sur),  one  of  the  great  Phoe- 
nician cities,  ']'$> ;  the  old  and 
new  city,  80  ;  description  of  her 
splendor  by  the  prophet  Eze- 
kiel,  95;  supplants  Sidon  as 
queen  of  the  Phcenician  cities, 
149;  sends  out  most  of  the 
later  colonies,  //'. ;  that  of  Car- 
thage, 211  ;  revolts  against  Tig- 
lath-Pileser  II.,  236;  besieged 
under  Shalmaneser  IV.,  240, 
243-245  ;  pacified  under  Sargon, 
258  ;  Baal,  king  of,  does  hom- 
age to  Esarhaddon,  340;  rebels 
against     him,    341 ;      Tyre    be- 

29 


sieged,  reduced  by  famine,  342; 
rebels  against  Asshurbanipal 
and  is  reduced  by  blockade  and 
thirst,  377. 


U. 


Ukinzir  (Greek  Chinziros),  Chal- 
dean prince  of  Sapiya,  king  of 
Babylon,  237  ;  submits  to  Tig- 
lath-Pileser  II.,  tb. 

Ulai  (Eulaeos),  river  of  Elam, 
313 ;  battle  on  the  bank  of,  388 

-391- 
Ummanaldash     II.    usurps     the 

crown  of  Elam  after  the  death 
of    Indabigash,  398  ;   dethroned 
and      succeeded     by     the     re- 
instated   Tammaritu,  406,  407, 
ib.;  reigns  once  more   a  short 
time,  flies  from  a  revolt  and  is 
carried  captive  to  Nineveh,  408  ; 
yoked  to     Asshurbanipal's    tri- 
umphal chariot  with  three  more 
captive  princes,  409. 
Ummanigash,  a  son  of  Urtaki,  be- 
comes king  of   Elam,  vassal  to 
Asshurbanipal,    392  ;    joins  the 
coalition  organized  by  Shamash- 
Shumukin     against    him,    393 ; 
dethroned  by  Tammaritu,  394. 
Umman-Minan,  brother  and  suc- 
cessor  of     Khudur-Nankhundi, 
king    of     Elam,    assists    Suzub 
against    Sennacherib,  3i5-3»6; 
is  defeated  in  the  battle  of  Kha- 
luli,    318-319. 
Urartu  (Armenia  proper),  rise  of, 
among  the  kingdoms  of  Nairi. 
203-206  ;  its  writing    borrowed 
from  the  Assyrian,  205 ;  revolts 
against   Tiglath-Pileser  II.,  and 
is    defeated,    226;    friendly    to 
Assyria    under    Asshurbanipal, 
419. 
Urmevate,     modern     Urmiah    or 

Urumieh,  city,  384. 
Urtaki,  King  of  Elam,  opens  hos- 
tilities   against    Asshurbanipal, 
385  ;  his  defeat  and  death,  ib, 
Urumieh.  Lake,  see  Lake  Van. 


450 


INDEX. 


Urza,  King  of  Urartu,  organizes 
a  vast  coalition  against  Sargon, 
259  ;  defeated  and  escapes  into 
the  mountains,  263 ;  puts  an 
end  to  his  own  life,  264. 

Urzana,  King  of  Muzazir,  ally  of 
Urza  of  Urartu,  263  ;  flies  from 
Sargon,  264. 

Uzziah,  see  Azariah. 

V. 

Vaiteh,  an  Arab  chieftain,  cap- 
tured by  Asshurbanipal,  409; 
yoked  to  his  triumphal  chariot 
with  the  three  kings  of  Elam, 
409. 

Van,  Lake,  and  Lake  Urumieh, 
their  peculiarities,  40-42  ;  Rock- 
stele  of  Tiglath-Pileser  I.  near, 

43-44- 

Van,  city  and  ruins  of,  204. 

Vas,  a  part  of  Arabia,  unidenti- 
fied, 408. 

Volga,  ancient  Ra,  a  river  of  Rus- 
sia, 359. 


Yahveh,  the  God   of   Israel,  10, 


137-138;  idolatrous  worship, 
local  and  private  shrines  of, 
152;  temple  of,  on  Mount 
Moriah,  proclaimed  only  lawful 
high  place  of  worship,  153. 

Yahua,  son  of  Khumri, — see  Jehu, 
king  of  Israel. 

Yaman,  or  Yavan,  upstart  king  of 
Ashdod,  266 ;  flies  to  Ethiopia 
and  is  delivered  up  to  Sargon, 
267. 

Yatnan,  see  Cyprus. 

Yavan,  Hebrew  and  Assyrian 
name  of  the  Greeks,  348. 

Yemen,  part  of  Arabia,  69. 


Z. 


Zagros  Mountains,  Tiglath-Pilese,r 

L's    campaign  in  the,   54 ;    the 

natural    eastern     boundary    of 

Assyria,  65. 
Zephaniah,    a    Hebrew    prophet, 

his   prophesy   against   Assyria, 

401. 
Zamzummim,      a    pre-Canaanitic 

people  of  Palestine,  74. 
Zurim,  a  pre-Canaanitic  people  of 

Palestine,  74. 


TLhc  Stor^  of  the  IKlations, 


Messrs.  G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS  take  pleasure  in 
announcing  that  they  have  in  course  of  publication,  in 
co-operation  with  Mr.  T.  Fisher  Unwin,  of  London,  a 
series  of  historical  studies,  intended  to  present  in  a 
graphic  manner  the  stories  of  the  different  nations  that 
have  attained  prominence  in  history. 

In  the  story  form  the  current  of  each  national  life  is 
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history. 

It  is  the  plan  of  the  writers  of  the  different  volumes  to 
fnter  into  the  real  life  of  the  peoples,  and  to  bring  them 
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struggled — as  they  studied  and  wrote,  and  as  they  amused 
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which  the  history  of  all  lands  begins,  will  not  be  over- 
looked, though  these  will  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
the  actual  history,  so  far  as  the  labors  of  the  accepted 
historical  authorities  have  resulted  in  definite  conclusions. 

The  subjects  of  the  different  volumes  have  been  planned 
to  cover  connecting  and,  as  far  as  possible,  consecutive 
epochs  or  periods,  so  that  the  set  when  completed  will 
present  in  a  comprehensive  narrative  the  chief  events  in 


the  great  StORY  OF  THE  NATIONS  ;  but  it  Is,  of  course 
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their  chronological  order. 

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THE  STORY  OF  GREECE.     Prof.  Jas.  A.  Harrison. 

"  ROME.     Arthur  Oilman. 

"  THE  JEWS.     Prof.  James  K.  Hosmer. 

«•  "  "  CHALDEA.     Z.  A.  Ragozin. 

«•  "  "  GERMANY.     S.  Baring-Gould. 

"  "  '•  NORWAY.     Hjalmar  H.  Boyesen. 

««  «*         "  SPAIN.     Rev.  E.  E.  and  Susan  Hale. 

•«  "  **  HUNGARY.     Prof.  A.  VAmbery. 

•'  "         "  CARTHAGE.     Prof.  Alfred  J.  Church. 

♦•  "  "  THE  SARACENS.     Arthur  Oilman. 

"  "         •♦  THE  MOORS  IN  SPAIN.     Stanley  Lane-Pool*. 

"  ••  "  THE  NORMANS.     Sarah  Orne  Jewett. 

••  ••         ♦'  PERSIA.     S.  G.  W.  Benjamin. 

"  "  •'  ANCIENT  EGYPT.     Prof.  Geo.  Rawlinson. 

••  '*  "  ALEXANDER'S  EMPIRE.     Prof.  J.  P.  Mahaffy. 

"  "         "  ASSYRIA.    Z.  A.  Ragozin. 

"  "         ••  THE  GOTHS.     Henry  Bradley. 

"  "  "  IRELAND.     Hon.  Emily  Lawless. 

"  "  "  TURKEY.     Stanley  Lane-Poole. 

"  "  "  MEDIA,  BABYLON,  AND  PERSIA.  Z.  A.  Ragozin. 

"  *•  "  MEDIAEVAL  FRANCE.     Prof.  Gustav  Masson. 

"  ••         "  HOLLAND.     Prof.  J.  Thorold  Rogers. 

••  MEXICO.     Susan  Hale. 

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••  ••  "  THE  HANSA  TOWNS.     Helen  Zimmern. 

•*  ••  "  EARLY  BRITAIN.     Prof.  Alfred  J.  Church. 

u  ..  ..  THE  BARBARY  CORSAIRS.  Stanley  Lane-Poolk. 

«  "  "  RUSSIA.     W.  R.  MoRFiLL. 

"  "  "  PORTUGAL.     H.  Morse-Stephens. 

"  THE  BYZANTINE  EMPIRE.     C.  W.  C.  Oman. 

Now  in  press  for  immediate  issue : 

THE  STORY  OF  SICILY.     E.  A.  Freeman. 

"    VEDIC  INDIA.     Z.  A.  Ragozin. 
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•*  '■■         "    WALES  AND  CORNWALL.     Owen  M.  Edwards. 

"     CANADA.     A.  R.  Macfarlane. 

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New  York  London 


Iberoes  of  the  IRations. 


EDITED    BY 


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A  Series  of  biographical  studies  of  the  lives  and  work 
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to  which  they  belonged,  and  who  have  been  accepted,  in 
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volumes,  as  follows  : 

Nelson,  and  the  Naval  Supremacy  of  England.  By  W.  Clark  Russell. 
author  of  "The  Wreck  of  the  Grosvenor,"  etc. 

Gustavus  Adolphus,  and  the  Struggle  of  Protestantism  for  Exist- 
ence.  By  C.  R.  L,  Fletcher,  M.A.,  late  Fellow  of  All  Souls  College, 
Oxford. 

Pericles,  and  the  Golden  Age  of  Athens.  By  Evelyn  Abbott,  M.A., 
Fellow  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

Theodoric  the  Goth,  the  Barbarian  Champion  of  Civilization,     By 

Thomas  Hodgkin,  author  of  "  Italy  and  Her  Invaders,"  etc. 

Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  the  Chivalry  of  England.  By  H.  R.  Fox- 
Bourne,  author  of  "  The  Life  of  John  Locke,"  etc. 

Julius  Caesar,  and  the  Organization  of  the  Roman  Empire.  By 
W.  Warde  Fowler,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 

Alexander  the  Great,  and  the  Extension  of  Greek  Rule  and  of 
Greek  Ideas.     By  Prof.  Ben7amin  I.  Wheeler,  Cornell  University. 

Charlemagne,  the  Reorganizer  of  Europe.  By  Prof.  George  L.  Burr, 
Cornell  University. 

Cicero,  and  the  Fall  of  the  Roman  Republic.  By  J.  L.  Strachan 
Davidson,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

Louis  XIV.,  and  the  Zenith  of  the  French  Monarchy.  By  Arthur 
Hassall,  jNI.A.,  Senior  Student  of  Christ  Church  College,  Oxford. 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  and  the  Adventurers   of  England.     By  A.  L. 

Smith,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

Bismarck.  The  New  German  Empire :  How  It  Arose  ;  What  [t 
Replaced  ;  and  What  It  Stands  For.  By  James  Sime,  author  of 
"A  Life  of  Lessing,"  etc. 

To  be  followed  by : 

Henry  of  Navarre,  and  the  Huguenots  in  France.  By  P.  F.  Willert, 
M.A.,  Fellow  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford. 

William  of  Orange,  the  Founder  of  the  Dutch  Republic.     By  Ruth 

Putnam. 

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E.  A.  Freeman,  D.C.L.,  LL.D.,  Regius  Prof,  of  History  in  the 
University    of   Oxford. 

Alfred  the  Great,  and  the  First  Kingdom  in  England.  By  F.  York 
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Charles  the  Bold,  and  the  Attempt  to  Found  a  Middle  Kingdom. 
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Edwards,  Fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 

Oliver  Cromwell,  and  the    Rule  of  the  Puritans   in  England.     By 

Charles    Firth,   Balliol    College,   Oxford. 

Marlborough,  and  England  as  a  Military  Power.  By  C.  W.  C. 
Oman,  A.M.,  Fellow  of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

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